00:00SPEAKER- Okay, something magical has happened in Mr. Land.
00:02SPEAKER- Ooh, I love magical stuff.
00:04SPEAKERLet me guess, if you send a note
00:07SPEAKERand a self-addressed stamped envelope,
00:09SPEAKERthen the Mr. People will send you a free Mr. of your choice
00:13SPEAKERwith your choice of add-ons for the next 10 days only.
00:17SPEAKER- Self-addressed stamped envelope is not a phrase
00:20SPEAKERI've heard since probably the mid '90s.
00:22SPEAKER- You don't work in the realm of SASEs anymore?
00:25SPEAKER- No, I'm not buying a lot of cereal
00:28SPEAKERthat gives away action figures anymore.
00:29SPEAKER- Did you have to, you didn't have to send,
00:31SPEAKERI guess you did have to send a,
00:32SPEAKERyou have to have to send a sassy for those sometimes.
00:35SPEAKER- Yeah, well, maybe not for packaged goods.
00:38SPEAKER- What was the best action figure you got for free?
00:41SPEAKER- Oh, I don't know if I ever sent off for anything.
00:43SPEAKERI probably did.
00:44SPEAKER- I got Yak Face from "Return of the Jedi."
00:47SPEAKER- Yak Face?
00:47SPEAKER- Yeah, he was one of the Jabba's Palace aliens.
00:51SPEAKERI got him and I got an emperor, I think.
00:53SPEAKER- Yakface.com, serving Star Wars collectors worldwide, says...
00:58SPEAKEROh, there's way too many action figures in here.
00:59SPEAKER- Anyway.
01:00SPEAKER- There were a ton that you could mail off for, yeah.
01:02SPEAKERBoba Fett was a mail-off one at first.
01:04SPEAKER- Oh yeah, that's huge.
01:05SPEAKERI think that mail-in Boba Fett
01:06SPEAKERis maybe the most valuable Star Wars toy that exists.
01:09SPEAKER- Well, that was a thing that you could actually,
01:11SPEAKERthe most valuable ones are the Boba Fetts
01:12SPEAKERthat had the actual shooting backpack rocket.
01:15SPEAKER- Yeah, like the one, oh, those,
01:16SPEAKER'cause those didn't make it to the market?
01:17SPEAKER- There's only seven of them or something, yeah.
01:19SPEAKERBut yeah, those mail-off Boba Fetts worth quite a bit.
01:22SPEAKER- Oh, anyway, the mister.
01:24SPEAKER- Yeah, back to the mister.
01:26SPEAKER- The magical thing that's happened
01:27SPEAKERis somebody has cloned the DE-10 Nano,
01:29SPEAKERthe board that forms the basis of the mister.
01:31SPEAKER- What do you mean clone?
01:32SPEAKERYou mean they took the same FPGA and the same arm chip
01:36SPEAKERand jammed them on a board together and-
01:38SPEAKER- So same FPGA, yes, but not same board design.
01:41SPEAKER- Okay.
01:42SPEAKER- So here's what happened is this person, Taki Udon,
01:45SPEAKERis a person in the mister community
01:47SPEAKERwho I was not super familiar with,
01:48SPEAKERbut they posted on Twitter like a week ago,
01:51SPEAKERa picture of a DE-10.
01:52SPEAKERSo the DE-10 Nano is the,
01:54SPEAKERit's made by Terasic, subsidized by Intel.
01:57SPEAKERIt's a student academic development board for FPGA stuff,
02:00SPEAKERand that's why it became the basis of the mister project,
02:03SPEAKER'cause it was subsidized for academic purposes, blah, blah,
02:05SPEAKERblah. - It was available
02:06SPEAKERand inexpensive.
02:07SPEAKER- People know the story.
02:08SPEAKERIt is way less inexpensive than it used to be.
02:10SPEAKERIt's like pushing $250 now.
02:12SPEAKERI think you can at least get them now,
02:13SPEAKER'cause for a while it was pushing 250
02:15SPEAKERand you couldn't even find them.
02:16SPEAKERI think they are purchasable now,
02:18SPEAKERbut the price has inflated so much
02:19SPEAKERthat it's kind of started growing out of reach
02:22SPEAKERof what people want to spend
02:23SPEAKERon an emulation retro device, right?
02:26SPEAKER- Wow, yeah, they've gotten really expensive.
02:27SPEAKEREven on mister add-ons, they're 250 bucks
02:30SPEAKERand they are currently unavailable.
02:32SPEAKER- Yes, so this clone that Maki Uno posted a picture of,
02:35SPEAKERit's not the exact same board layout.
02:37SPEAKERIt's very similar.
02:38SPEAKERIt's the same size, the same form factor,
02:39SPEAKERbut you can see looking at it,
02:41SPEAKERthere are fewer traces, there are fewer resistors,
02:44SPEAKERwhatever on there, like there's just less stuff on the board
02:47SPEAKERand some of the ports have been changed as well,
02:48SPEAKERbut it is that same SOC.
02:50SPEAKERThe SOC on that thing is made by Altera.
02:52SPEAKERIt's called the Cyclone 5, which is both the FPGA
02:55SPEAKERand there's a single arm core on that same chip,
02:57SPEAKERwhich is what runs the Linux in that thing
02:59SPEAKERthat handles file IO and networking and stuff like that.
03:02SPEAKERSo everybody looked at that and was like,
03:05SPEAKERhow is this possible?
03:07SPEAKERBecause if you go to, I can't remember if I went
03:08SPEAKERto Digi-Key or Mouser or one of the other,
03:10SPEAKERif you go look up the Cyclone 5 on,
03:11SPEAKERI think it was Digi-Key that I looked at,
03:13SPEAKERthe chip alone, they are selling for $325.
03:16SPEAKER- Like just the bare chip, not attached to a board.
03:19SPEAKER- Just the FPGA.
03:20SPEAKER- Yeah, that's a lot.
03:21SPEAKER- So people were like, what are you doing?
03:22SPEAKERAre you harvesting FPGAs off of defective
03:26SPEAKERor like end of life devices
03:28SPEAKERthat you're getting your hands on?
03:29SPEAKER'Cause that happens.
03:30SPEAKERYou know, how people harvest ICs all the time
03:32SPEAKERoff of old stuff to repurpose.
03:34SPEAKER- That's where all the Mr. SDRAM guests come from
03:36SPEAKERfor the most part.
03:37SPEAKER- Or people were like, are you using some kind
03:39SPEAKERof weird clone that might not be reliable
03:41SPEAKERor might be inferior in some way?
03:43SPEAKERSo finally somebody tweeted at him about that issue
03:47SPEAKERand he was just like, they were like, hey,
03:49SPEAKERyou're selling this Mr. Clone for way less
03:51SPEAKERthan just this chip costs.
03:52SPEAKERAnd he was like, yeah,
03:53SPEAKERthat's the narrative that's going around,
03:54SPEAKERbut Altera actually gave an incredibly good competitive price
03:58SPEAKERat bulk order volume.
04:00SPEAKERBasically he's saying like, this thing is worth,
04:02SPEAKERor this thing costs way, way, way less
04:04SPEAKERthan you think it does,
04:05SPEAKERbased on what these like small batch part sellers
04:07SPEAKERare dealing it.
04:08SPEAKERSo this kind of changes everything in that scene.
04:11SPEAKER- Yeah, 'cause like a $99 board in there means
04:13SPEAKERyou can build a Mr. for what the D10 nano board costs
04:16SPEAKERright now, basically.
04:17SPEAKER- So there's multiple components to this.
04:18SPEAKERActually, yes, what you just said is the first one,
04:20SPEAKERit's just gonna be way, way lower cost of entry
04:22SPEAKERto get into this thing now.
04:23SPEAKER'Cause it's a $99 board.
04:25SPEAKERThey have also redesigned the SDRAM
04:27SPEAKERthat usually goes for upwards of 60 bucks to 15.
04:30SPEAKER- Oh, thank God.
04:31SPEAKER- So a full Mr. set up now is assuming all this works,
04:34SPEAKERit's gonna cost $115.
04:35SPEAKERFull meaning like bare bones,
04:37SPEAKERlike you can play games on it, but that's about it.
04:39SPEAKER- But then the other thing is,
04:40SPEAKERif we're not relying on that D10 nano board,
04:42SPEAKERwe can also do things like build different form factors
04:44SPEAKERlike the-
04:45SPEAKER- That is exactly it.
04:46SPEAKERSo that's what's really exciting about this.
04:48SPEAKERBut before I even get to that,
04:49SPEAKERlike even this first clone board they're working on,
04:52SPEAKERthey've made some minor improvements
04:53SPEAKERthat even there are gonna be huge.
04:55SPEAKERLike, you had to get your own USB OTG hub
04:58SPEAKERto plug into the D10.
04:59SPEAKER'Cause the D10 can't take just like a controller.
05:01SPEAKERYou can't just plug that in and have it see a USB device.
05:04SPEAKERIt needs a, which costs like 50 bucks
05:06SPEAKERif you get the nice USB hub board add on.
05:09SPEAKERThey've built the OTG hub right into this clone port
05:12SPEAKERand put a USB-A port on it.
05:13SPEAKERYou don't even need a USB hub anymore.
05:15SPEAKERYou can buy just this board and that RAM
05:17SPEAKERand plug your controller straight into this thing.
05:18SPEAKERThe point is they're making little design improvements
05:21SPEAKERor to step back, the real point is
05:23SPEAKERnow they are no longer beholden to whatever dev boards
05:26SPEAKERare coming out of Terasic or Xilinx
05:27SPEAKERor whoever they would have had to repurpose
05:30SPEAKERlike expensive dev boards from in the past.
05:32SPEAKERNow they can build their own boards
05:34SPEAKERpurpose designed to spec exactly what they want.
05:36SPEAKER- For old computer and video game emulation.
05:39SPEAKERThat is fantastic.
05:40SPEAKER- The FPGA is the only thing on that thing
05:41SPEAKERthat actually really matters.
05:43SPEAKERThat actually cost money and that was hard to get.
05:45SPEAKERNow that that thing apparently is not hard to get
05:47SPEAKERor expensive anymore,
05:48SPEAKERthe community can just start building its own boards
05:50SPEAKERaround that ship to do exactly what they want
05:52SPEAKERand nothing else.
05:53SPEAKER- Oh man.
05:54SPEAKER- Yeah, so we're basically gonna start getting boards now
05:56SPEAKERthat do more and cost less because they don't have
05:59SPEAKERall the stuff on that development board you didn't need
06:01SPEAKERbut they do have stuff that wouldn't have been on there.
06:03SPEAKER- So does that mean also we'll see handheld stuff?
06:05SPEAKER- Yes, so he's already said flat out.
06:07SPEAKERHe's like, hey, this clone board that is the same form factor
06:09SPEAKERthat aims to just be 100% compatible with the real thing
06:12SPEAKERis going to come first.
06:13SPEAKERThen we are working on a much more elaborate board
06:16SPEAKERin a console style form factor
06:17SPEAKERthat's gonna have a lot more stuff built into it.
06:19SPEAKERSo like he already said on the Mr. Discord,
06:21SPEAKERthe RAM is gonna be built into that board
06:23SPEAKERbut you can imagine what else they might put in there.
06:24SPEAKERLike wifi and Bluetooth could be built in
06:27SPEAKER'cause you need adapters for that right now.
06:29SPEAKER- There's no reason you couldn't put the D-pads
06:31SPEAKERand buttons and triggers and stuff on there.
06:33SPEAKER- So I fully expect one of these nice console style versions
06:36SPEAKERto have all the analog video outputs hardware built in
06:39SPEAKER'cause right now you have to get yet another add on board
06:41SPEAKERto add that so they could just put the VGA output,
06:44SPEAKERthe analog video out right on that thing.
06:46SPEAKER- What bus does the analog video go?
06:48SPEAKERDoes it go over I2C or something
06:50SPEAKERor is it on some other weird bus?
06:52SPEAKER- It goes over the GPIO headers.
06:53SPEAKERSo maybe that is I2C, I'm not sure.
06:56SPEAKER- But it's probably they're just saying,
06:57SPEAKER"Hey, the GPIO, these headers are the analog driver outs."
07:01SPEAKER- Yeah, so that is actually the big quandary right now
07:04SPEAKERis you can't have,
07:05SPEAKERyou can only have either the analog video out
07:07SPEAKERor a second stick RAM,
07:08SPEAKERwhich second stick RAM is not that useful right now
07:11SPEAKERbut there are some very limited use cases for it.
07:12SPEAKERAnyway, the sky's the limit now
07:14SPEAKERfor what they are going to be able to just build themselves
07:17SPEAKERfor this project.
07:18SPEAKER- That's exciting.
07:19SPEAKER- It's super exciting.
07:19SPEAKERA handheld, they already flat out said
07:21SPEAKERafter that console thing we're doing,
07:23SPEAKERwe're gonna make a handheld.
07:24SPEAKER- Wow.
07:25SPEAKER- 'Cause this thing also uses less power than the D10
07:27SPEAKER'cause they're using better power switching hardware
07:29SPEAKERor whatever.
07:30SPEAKER- So how does this new FPGA compare
07:33SPEAKERin terms of performance to the,
07:35SPEAKERis it the same, it's the same cycle in five?
07:37SPEAKER- Exact same chip.
07:37SPEAKER- Okay.
07:38SPEAKER- Yeah, like exact same, like it runs the same software.
07:40SPEAKERHe said they didn't even have to fork the Mr. Software
07:42SPEAKERand tweak anything, it's running the stock stuff.
07:44SPEAKER- Okay, so then where does this leave the cores
07:47SPEAKERthat we can't run on the current D10 Nano?
07:50SPEAKERProbably the same place.
07:51SPEAKERLike we're gonna have the same upper limit on this.
07:53SPEAKER- Yeah, same chip, same logic elements, same everything.
07:56SPEAKERAnd they're going for a hundred percent compatibility
07:58SPEAKERso it'll have all the same drawbacks for now.
08:00SPEAKERThe thing that I, you know, maybe more learned people
08:02SPEAKERcan step in here and add some context
08:04SPEAKERbut the thing that really jumps out to me though now
08:07SPEAKERis like what happens when a better FPGA
08:10SPEAKERit's this kind of low sensible volume pricing
08:13SPEAKERwhere now you don't need to wait for some company
08:15SPEAKERto put out a like an $800 development board
08:17SPEAKERthat happens to have a better FPGA on it.
08:19SPEAKERIf you can just get those chips directly
08:21SPEAKERthen like the successor to the Mr.
08:23SPEAKERcould just be built to purpose, right?
08:25SPEAKER- Is this just happening now
08:27SPEAKERbecause somebody like called whoever makes the Cyclone
08:30SPEAKERand was like, "Hey, would you like to buy some of those?"
08:32SPEAKEROr like presumably somebody had to write a check
08:35SPEAKERfor them to get bulk pricing on this, right?
08:37SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, it sounds like they contacted
08:38SPEAKERthe manufacturer directly, but by all accounts
08:41SPEAKERit was all just driven by the fact that the prices
08:43SPEAKERjust keep going up on this stuff rather than down.
08:45SPEAKER- I guess it makes it that when the prices keep going up
08:48SPEAKERthere's a place where the line between the price
08:51SPEAKERthe current price of the existing thing
08:53SPEAKERand the cost of making a new thing cross
08:56SPEAKERand then it makes sense to start making the new thing.
08:58SPEAKERYeah, man, that's cool.
08:59SPEAKER- It's awesome.
08:59SPEAKERI mean, my Mr. set up when I got in
09:01SPEAKERwas like 220 all in for everything.
09:04SPEAKERAnd now you see regularly see bundles going around
09:06SPEAKERfor like $600 granted that has like kind of everything
09:09SPEAKERyou could possibly get for it.
09:10SPEAKERBut there's this Mars project they're saying
09:12SPEAKERis gonna be like 700.
09:13SPEAKERLike it was just like this race to the top.
09:15SPEAKERWhat's the name of the new board?
09:17SPEAKER- There is no name yet.
09:18SPEAKERLike there's just kind of, you know,
09:20SPEAKERI'll throw a link to that video in the show notes for this
09:22SPEAKERwhere he kind of talks through his methodology
09:25SPEAKERand design philosophy and stuff.
09:26SPEAKERYou know, I should offer a caveat here probably.
09:28SPEAKERI don't think this person has actually really delivered
09:30SPEAKERany kind of hardware in the scene yet before.
09:33SPEAKERSo this could be all a bunch of nonsense,
09:35SPEAKERsmoke and mirrors until we have products in our hands
09:36SPEAKERand we can test them and everything.
09:37SPEAKERBut he did post a video of the prototype
09:40SPEAKERhooked up and working yesterday.
09:42SPEAKERSo it's like, seems pretty legit so far,
09:44SPEAKERbut just to summarize though, it's like a week or two ago,
09:48SPEAKERthe whole Mr. Project felt kind of stagnant,
09:50SPEAKERespecially on the hardware side.
09:51SPEAKERLike there just hasn't really been much going on
09:54SPEAKERother than like some incremental progress
09:56SPEAKERon cores here and there, but especially like hardware wise,
09:58SPEAKERlike it's just kind of been the hardware
10:00SPEAKERfor the last like two, three years.
10:02SPEAKERAnd all of a sudden, like now out of nowhere now,
10:03SPEAKERit's like, we've got a hundred dollar Mr. coming.
10:05SPEAKERWe've got a big elaborate like console all in one form factor
10:09SPEAKERwith all the features built into it.
10:10SPEAKERAnd he's even saying that console thing
10:11SPEAKERhas got like one big new feature
10:13SPEAKERthat is a secret that nobody has done before.
10:15SPEAKERAnd I have no idea what that's even gonna be.
10:18SPEAKERThen a handheld,
10:19SPEAKERwhich he actually just said on the discord is dockable.
10:22SPEAKERSo that's probably gonna be like a switch
10:24SPEAKERanalog pocket situation where you can play it handheld
10:26SPEAKERand plug it into a TV.
10:28SPEAKERAnd then there's like, I didn't even mention,
10:29SPEAKERthere's two more like lower cost reduced feature set
10:32SPEAKERconsoles coming by like all of this by the end of the year.
10:35SPEAKERAnd who knows like what the Mr. 2 could be built around
10:38SPEAKERa whole new FPGA at some point now that this seems like
10:40SPEAKERit might be possible from a supply chain standpoint,
10:42SPEAKERit's just like a crazy amount of stuff happening at once,
10:45SPEAKERwhich again, granted is all being promised by one person,
10:48SPEAKERbut if all this stuff pans out,
10:49SPEAKERit's gonna be like retro game Christmas.
10:51SPEAKER(upbeat music)
11:12SPEAKER(upbeat music continues)
11:19SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod.
11:22SPEAKERI'm Will.
11:22SPEAKER- I'm Brad.
11:23SPEAKERHello.
11:24SPEAKER- I'm a little hoarse.
11:25SPEAKERI was doing some screaming this morning.
11:27SPEAKER- I am also a bit hoarse.
11:28SPEAKERSome high jinks, some subterranean high jinks were happening.
11:32SPEAKER- I play those kinds of games and I'm like,
11:34SPEAKERI'm not gonna do the screaming thing.
11:36SPEAKERAnd then they're very good at the jump scares
11:38SPEAKERand you end up screaming and usually dying in my case.
11:42SPEAKERI think you were more effective at running away usually.
11:44SPEAKER- Oh, you're also doing it for the likes though.
11:47SPEAKER- That's true.
11:48SPEAKERI mean, if I get the likes, if I get those,
11:50SPEAKERif people like to subscribe,
11:52SPEAKERany amount of physical harm, it's worth it.
11:54SPEAKER- What good is your life if you don't have likes?
11:56SPEAKER- It's, God, that's grim.
11:58SPEAKER- We were playing content warning, we should say.
12:01SPEAKER- Yeah, we were playing content warning
12:02SPEAKERon Nextlander this morning.
12:04SPEAKER- Pretty awesome, which is basically a lethal company,
12:06SPEAKERexcept instead of trying to get scrap,
12:07SPEAKERyou're trying to record your friends dying
12:09SPEAKERfor social media clout.
12:12SPEAKER- And speaking of home video formats.
12:15SPEAKER- Okay, all right, nice.
12:16SPEAKER- Bringing it on back to the good old days.
12:20SPEAKERWe had a request, several users asked us
12:23SPEAKERto dig into this over the last four months,
12:24SPEAKERso I'm not gonna name anyone in particular,
12:26SPEAKERbut we had a request for an episode about video formats,
12:31SPEAKERhome video media formats specifically.
12:33SPEAKER- History of home video, I guess.
12:35SPEAKER- Yeah, and we started doing the research on this
12:38SPEAKERand realized there's a lot, actually,
12:42SPEAKERkind of a shocking amount to talk about,
12:44SPEAKERstarting with a little bit of reel-to-reel film,
12:50SPEAKERlike 16 and eight millimeter film,
12:53SPEAKERgoing all the way through.
12:54SPEAKERSo we're gonna do this in two parts.
12:55SPEAKERI don't know if we're gonna do 'em back-to-back,
12:56SPEAKERbut we're gonna do 'em in two parts
12:58SPEAKERwhere the first one is the analog formats
13:01SPEAKERand then when it jumps over to the digital formats,
13:04SPEAKERwe're gonna take a pause and then we're gonna do that
13:06SPEAKERas a separate thing, 'cause in some ways,
13:09SPEAKERthe analog stuff is really weird
13:10SPEAKERand there's a lot of choices made in the '70s and '80s.
13:16SPEAKER- The real Wild West kind of vibe to everything, for sure.
13:20SPEAKER- Yeah, but also the dawn of DVD and digital eight
13:23SPEAKERand all those kind of digital tape formats
13:25SPEAKERfelt like the beginning of the modern age in a lot of ways,
13:30SPEAKERwhere we were just distributing the bits on disks
13:32SPEAKERinstead of over the internet like we do now.
13:34SPEAKER- Yeah, there's kind of a tidy dividing line, I think,
13:36SPEAKERbetween this analog era
13:37SPEAKERand when digital stuff started catching on.
13:39SPEAKERI mean, probably mid-'90s, but like '97 with the DVDs,
13:43SPEAKERkind of a real beginning of this second era.
13:46SPEAKERSo I guess we'll be going up to kind of right before that.
13:48SPEAKER- Yeah, that sounds right.
13:49SPEAKERSo we're looking at specifically stuff
13:53SPEAKERthat was meant for home.
13:54SPEAKERSo we're not gonna talk about like commercial Betamax
13:57SPEAKERor commercial SVHS or old reel-to-reel tapes
13:59SPEAKERor anything like that.
14:00SPEAKER- I do have this Betacam Wikipedia tab open.
14:02SPEAKER- Okay, so we can talk about Betacam for a sec,
14:05SPEAKER'cause like, you know, anyway, but for the most part,
14:08SPEAKERit's stuff that's designed to hook up to a TV
14:11SPEAKERand watch at home, whether it's prerecorded
14:14SPEAKERor something that you record yourself,
14:15SPEAKERlike in terms of camcorders, stuff like that.
14:17SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, I think because like today,
14:19SPEAKERit is utterly impossible to remember this,
14:21SPEAKERbut I think even when you and I were growing up,
14:23SPEAKERor I mean, you're like four years older than me.
14:25SPEAKER- I was born in '75.
14:26SPEAKER- You probably remember maybe a little better than I do
14:28SPEAKERa time before you could watch video on demand at home
14:32SPEAKERin any way whatsoever.
14:33SPEAKERLike I barely even remember that
14:35SPEAKERbecause by the time I have memories,
14:37SPEAKERwe had a VCR in the house, right?
14:38SPEAKERBut like, it was not much before that,
14:41SPEAKERthat you watched what was on broadcast TV
14:43SPEAKERor you watched nothing.
14:44SPEAKER- So what I remember explicitly,
14:47SPEAKERthere's two early VHS memories that I have.
14:49SPEAKEROne is that in like 1981,
14:50SPEAKERwhen I was probably six years old,
14:53SPEAKERthe guy who, my dad, the guy who had the office,
14:56SPEAKERkind of like his office neighbor across the street
14:59SPEAKERfrom his realtor shop, ran a copying machine company
15:03SPEAKERand he always bought new technology stuff.
15:05SPEAKERAnd he loaned us his VHS, portable VHS kit,
15:10SPEAKERwhich came in two like shoulder sling bags
15:13SPEAKERthat had a giant fat connector between them.
15:16SPEAKERAnd one had the tape unit in it,
15:18SPEAKERand one was the thing that you hooked up to the TV.
15:20SPEAKERAnd he gave us a copy of, I think, "The Black Hole,"
15:23SPEAKERwhich we watched when I was six years old
15:25SPEAKERand it scared the living shit out of me.
15:27SPEAKERThe other one was when I went to my grandparents' house
15:31SPEAKERthat same year, probably maybe the year after,
15:33SPEAKERthey had a tape player that I assume,
15:37SPEAKERI don't know how they did it actually,
15:38SPEAKERbut it had a button you could press
15:39SPEAKERthat would record what you were playing on the tape
15:42SPEAKERto some sort of internal buffer,
15:44SPEAKERwhich I assume was just a tape
15:45SPEAKERthat was permanently built into the box.
15:48SPEAKERAnd then you could rewind that and play that back
15:51SPEAKERand record it on another tape.
15:52SPEAKERSo you could do a two-generation dupe of a tape,
15:57SPEAKERwhich seems like the kind of thing
15:58SPEAKERthat would have gotten you in trouble with the law,
16:00SPEAKERwith the studios back then,
16:03SPEAKER'cause it was definitely meant for duplication.
16:05SPEAKERBut anyway, so those are my two.
16:09SPEAKERYeah, we did that.
16:10SPEAKERI feel like I made a copy of Buck Rogers for my grandmother
16:15SPEAKER'cause she liked Buck Rogers.
16:16SPEAKER- A noble purpose.
16:17SPEAKEROur first VCR was one of those two unit doohickeys.
16:20SPEAKERI mean, one side was literally just the tape deck
16:23SPEAKERand kind of nothing else.
16:24SPEAKEROn the other side, I guess, was the sort of tuner
16:27SPEAKERand playback kind of part.
16:28SPEAKER- Well, back then, they were all top loading, right?
16:30SPEAKERThose two side ones were definitely,
16:32SPEAKERthe one that we borrowed was a top loader.
16:34SPEAKERYou had to put it in the top and then smash the thing down.
16:37SPEAKERBut before all that, there was home film.
16:43SPEAKERHome film was wildly popular in the '60s and '70s.
16:46SPEAKERIt was kind of expensive 'cause you had to get
16:48SPEAKERa million little pictures developed
16:49SPEAKERevery time you send a piece of a film in.
16:51SPEAKERYou usually had to mail it off someplace.
16:53SPEAKERBut cameras, projectors, and development
16:56SPEAKERwere things that you could order from Sears or whatever,
16:59SPEAKERand you would get your camera and your projector.
17:02SPEAKERAnd then for like around the modern equivalent of a grand,
17:06SPEAKERthey were a couple hundred bucks in most cases,
17:08SPEAKERyou could record video and send it off someplace
17:11SPEAKERand you'd come back two weeks later
17:12SPEAKERand you could watch videos of your family
17:14SPEAKERas if they were shot by cinematographers
17:16SPEAKERand auteurs in Hollywood.
17:17SPEAKER- Or you could record films.
17:19SPEAKER- Films, did I say videos?
17:20SPEAKER- Yes, you said videos and I wonder, that makes me wonder,
17:23SPEAKERlike, what was the genesis of the word video
17:25SPEAKERand when did that actually come into common usage?
17:27SPEAKERBecause back then it was films generally, right?
17:30SPEAKEROr movies that people would say,
17:31SPEAKERbut like where did the word video come from
17:34SPEAKERand when did that become?
17:35SPEAKER- I wonder if video had to do with the,
17:37SPEAKER'cause for a long time, if you think about it,
17:39SPEAKERlike the ability to record TV was a real innovation.
17:44SPEAKERFor much of the first like first 15 years of TV,
17:47SPEAKERin a lot of cases, the shows were literally broadcast
17:51SPEAKERand blasted out of the airwaves
17:53SPEAKERand there was no method to record them
17:55SPEAKERother than pointing a camera at a screen,
17:58SPEAKERa film camera at the screen, right?
18:00SPEAKERSo you either did things on film, shot things on film
18:04SPEAKERand then did a tele scene where you projected the film
18:07SPEAKERonto a wall and used the video camera just to show that
18:11SPEAKERor you did a straight live broadcast
18:14SPEAKERof whatever it was you were showing.
18:17SPEAKERDo you find some stuff about video?
18:18SPEAKER- Yes, yep.
18:19SPEAKER- You look like a man who has information.
18:21SPEAKER- At least according to the online etymology dictionary,
18:23SPEAKERthe word video was coined in 1935
18:26SPEAKERas a visual equivalent of audio from a Latin word
18:29SPEAKERthat's spelled the same way, how's your Latin?
18:31SPEAKER- I took four years in high school.
18:33SPEAKER- B-I-D-E-O?
18:35SPEAKER- Yeah, that reads as video, I believe.
18:37SPEAKER- This is also just pronounced video, Latin?
18:40SPEAKER- Video is, I think, to see, vidi, vidi, vidi, vidi, vidi.
18:43SPEAKER- Yes, it translates to I see,
18:46SPEAKERbut how would you pronounce it?
18:48SPEAKER- Well, it's a dead language, so we have no idea.
18:49SPEAKER- Oh really, is it actually--
18:50SPEAKER- If you wanna know how to pronounce Latin,
18:52SPEAKERyou have to ask somebody who's Catholic.
18:53SPEAKERI'm, I am not, I just took Latin in high school.
18:56SPEAKER- I thought Latin pronunciation
18:57SPEAKERwas still at least somewhat understood.
18:59SPEAKEROr wait, actually-- - Yeah, sure it is,
19:00SPEAKERbut four years in high school.
19:01SPEAKER- Yeah, haven't I seen some arguments
19:02SPEAKERabout how a C is pronounced in Latin,
19:04SPEAKERlike isn't there disagreement?
19:06SPEAKER- Cuz versus, there's no suh sound, I think, is the, yeah.
19:10SPEAKERThere's a lot of stuff, there's like Js or Js or,
19:13SPEAKERdepending on whether you learn Latin,
19:16SPEAKERecclesiastical Latin or classical Latin,
19:19SPEAKERdepends on how you pronounce the Cs
19:21SPEAKERand the Js and stuff like that.
19:23SPEAKERI have some questions about "Indiana Jones 3"
19:26SPEAKERas a result of this, just for the--
19:29SPEAKER- Fair, fair.
19:30SPEAKERAnyway, like I, you know, the history of like film stock
19:33SPEAKERand cinema and all that stuff,
19:34SPEAKERobviously way out of scope for this podcast,
19:36SPEAKERbut it probably goes without saying
19:37SPEAKERthat these '50s, '60s, well, mainly '60s, right?
19:40SPEAKERYou said it was when this stuff became big,
19:41SPEAKERbut these like '60s and '70s film formats
19:44SPEAKERare just smaller, less capable versions
19:47SPEAKERof the same things they were projecting
19:48SPEAKERand filming movies on since the beginning of time.
19:50SPEAKER- Kind of, I mean, there were three main home uses.
19:53SPEAKERThere was 16 millimeter,
19:54SPEAKERwhich is based on the cheap film standard.
19:57SPEAKERIt's a cheaper film standard.
19:59SPEAKERIt was introduced in 1923.
20:01SPEAKERThe big thing about that is that film stock back then
20:03SPEAKERwas a nitrate base, which was basically,
20:05SPEAKERit meant you were carrying canisters full of bombs around.
20:08SPEAKER(laughing)
20:09SPEAKERAnd the acetate base would burn,
20:12SPEAKERbut not quite as enthusiastically.
20:15SPEAKER24 frames per second, just like 35 mil,
20:18SPEAKERlike clerks and scrubs and movies in "Rise Kingdom,"
20:21SPEAKERand a bunch of movies are shot on 16 mil film still.
20:26SPEAKEREight millimeter was released in 1932.
20:28SPEAKERIt was even cheaper than eight millimeter.
20:30SPEAKERUsually you ran that at, yeah, than 16 millimeter, sorry.
20:34SPEAKERUsually you ran that at 16 frames per second.
20:37SPEAKERThis was the one that was popular at home most.
20:40SPEAKERIt was, the film was pretty cheap.
20:43SPEAKERThere was sound available on a magnetic track
20:46SPEAKERor on a light track on the side.
20:48SPEAKER- Oh, that's fascinating.
20:49SPEAKERI had no idea about that.
20:50SPEAKER- Yeah, and it was discontinued in '92,
20:52SPEAKERwhich presumably VHS was the final nail
20:55SPEAKERin the coffin of eight millimeter.
20:57SPEAKERAnd then Super 8 was eight millimeter film
20:59SPEAKERthat had smaller perforation,
21:01SPEAKERso there's a bit more image space
21:02SPEAKERon either side of the frame.
21:04SPEAKERAnd it came in a cartridge, so it was easier to,
21:07SPEAKERyou didn't have to thread stuff through.
21:09SPEAKER- Okay, yes, I guess I have seen those types of cameras
21:12SPEAKERthat have a little cartridge thing.
21:14SPEAKER- Yeah, it had a little hook thing
21:15SPEAKERthat you smacked down
21:16SPEAKERand it just kind of fed it automatically.
21:18SPEAKERIt also did sound, and usually it was 18 frames a second
21:21SPEAKERas well.
21:22SPEAKER- Probably in the major motion picture,
21:24SPEAKERSuper 8 is where I saw a Super 8 camera.
21:26SPEAKERI have to guess.
21:27SPEAKER- Oh, maybe.
21:28SPEAKER- Among other places,
21:29SPEAKERbut I did not realize there were home film solutions
21:33SPEAKERfor capturing sound back then.
21:34SPEAKERLike I, my mom has a family friend
21:37SPEAKERor like I had a family friend.
21:38SPEAKERThis was like more like my grandparents' family friend,
21:41SPEAKERbut he passed away some years ago
21:43SPEAKERand his son going through his things later
21:45SPEAKERfound a reel of what I guess must've been 16 millimeter film
21:49SPEAKERand had it developed,
21:50SPEAKERor maybe it had already been developed anyway.
21:52SPEAKERNobody knew what was on it until they projected it.
21:54SPEAKERAnd it turned out to be a bunch of footage
21:56SPEAKERof my grandparents in their thirties
21:58SPEAKERand my mom when she was like seven.
22:00SPEAKER- Oh man.
22:01SPEAKER- But that had no sound, you know?
22:02SPEAKERSo I just, I associate,
22:04SPEAKERor maybe it's like a wonder years thing as well, right?
22:06SPEAKERLike I just associate that 50s, 60s type of home movie
22:09SPEAKERshot on film as having no sound.
22:12SPEAKER- So from what I could tell, the sound was not,
22:15SPEAKERthe sound added a lot of cost.
22:17SPEAKERYou think about what microphones were like back then.
22:19SPEAKERI don't believe, like my family's home movies
22:22SPEAKERfrom that time did not have sound either.
22:24SPEAKERWhen we had them digitized to VHS or DVD or whatever,
22:27SPEAKERthe people who, the people who did the digitization
22:31SPEAKERpicked like stock music and put like,
22:34SPEAKERif it was like a kid playing,
22:35SPEAKERthere'd be some sort of rambunctious
22:37SPEAKERkind of xylophone music.
22:39SPEAKERYeah, it was, it was funny.
22:40SPEAKER- That's exactly what we got
22:41SPEAKERwith whoever they sent that thing off to.
22:43SPEAKERAnd the first thing I did was just mute it
22:45SPEAKERwhile I was watching it.
22:46SPEAKER- Yeah, that seems right.
22:48SPEAKERSo then, and then before that,
22:49SPEAKERthere was a reel to reel tapes, which were not,
22:53SPEAKERafter that rather, there were reel to reel tapes,
22:55SPEAKERwhich were analog magnetic tapes.
22:58SPEAKERThey were not, they were available for consumers,
23:01SPEAKERbut they were not particularly common.
23:03SPEAKERThey were fiddly 'cause you had to thread the tape manually
23:06SPEAKERthrough the read and write heads.
23:07SPEAKERAnd people mostly used them to record stuff off of the TV.
23:10SPEAKERThey were much more common in a professional context
23:13SPEAKERwhere they would record like,
23:16SPEAKERyeah, the networks would broadcast stuff over satellite
23:19SPEAKERor microwave feeds to their affiliates
23:22SPEAKERand they'd record those transmissions.
23:25SPEAKERAnd then they'd air them when it was time to show,
23:27SPEAKERyou know, Ozzie and Harriet or whatever,
23:29SPEAKERleave it to Beaver in the afternoon,
23:30SPEAKERprobably Star Trek is a better example, syndicated stuff.
23:33SPEAKER- Be clear, we're talking about the big classic console
23:36SPEAKERwith two gigantic reels that are just kind of exposed
23:38SPEAKERto the air with the tape between them
23:40SPEAKERthat you kind of know what those look like
23:42SPEAKERin your mind's eye.
23:42SPEAKERBut I didn't know you could do video on those.
23:44SPEAKERI always thought those were just for audio.
23:46SPEAKER- Well, I mean, they're just tape, right?
23:49SPEAKER- Well, you have to have something to interpret
23:51SPEAKERwhat's on the tape, right?
23:52SPEAKERAnd I didn't realize that had been developed
23:53SPEAKERat that time for video.
23:54SPEAKER- Well, so that happened in this, I can't,
23:58SPEAKERI didn't actually find out,
23:59SPEAKERI didn't look to see when that was,
24:00SPEAKERbut my recollection is that was during the '60s or late '50s
24:03SPEAKERthat we got the ability to easily record stuff
24:05SPEAKERwithout using film.
24:08SPEAKERSo, okay, so that takes us up to this,
24:10SPEAKERprobably the late '60s, early '70s.
24:15SPEAKERA lot of like eight millimeter and super eight
24:18SPEAKERwere often used for like news journalists.
24:22SPEAKER16 mil also was used for journalists.
24:26SPEAKERThe rise of tape cassettes,
24:29SPEAKERthe invention of tape cassettes is the next big thing,
24:31SPEAKER'cause it took all that mechanism
24:33SPEAKERthat was in the reel-to-reel and put it in a container
24:37SPEAKERthat let it automatically thread the read and write heads
24:40SPEAKERthrough the tape in a way
24:41SPEAKERthat made it simpler to use, basically.
24:44SPEAKER- And you can see why removing the potential for user error
24:47SPEAKERis huge in that situation,
24:49SPEAKERas fragile as tape is and as fiddly as it would be
24:51SPEAKERto have to string it between reels all the time
24:53SPEAKERand not screw it up.
24:54SPEAKER- Exactly, and that brings us to the great video "War,"
24:58SPEAKERwhich everybody knows about.
25:00SPEAKERIt was, for all intents and purposes, the first format war.
25:05SPEAKERThere were two functionally identical products,
25:07SPEAKERone that was open and one that was closed.
25:09SPEAKERBetamax was originally released in 1975,
25:15SPEAKERfive days before I was born.
25:17SPEAKERIt was the very first in the long line of Sony products
25:20SPEAKERthat was pitched as, "This is the good one,
25:23SPEAKER"which is why it's more expensive."
25:25SPEAKER- Boy, that's like the entire theme
25:28SPEAKERof Sony Consumer Electronics for as long as I've known them.
25:31SPEAKER- Yep, I mean, look, it's worked sometimes
25:33SPEAKERand sometimes not so much.
25:34SPEAKER- I mean, look, those TVs were very good,
25:36SPEAKERlike the Walkman, the Discman.
25:38SPEAKERThey have made a lot of good products over the years.
25:40SPEAKER- The Bravia TVs, they made a lot of money on.
25:44SPEAKERTurns out, in this case, nobody cared, not really.
25:49SPEAKERTechnically, it was pretty similar to VHS.
25:51SPEAKERThere were 250, so important note here.
25:54SPEAKEROn analog video formats,
26:00SPEAKERwe measure the lines of light and dark,
26:03SPEAKERlike the dark, the bright,
26:05SPEAKERthe resolution of the black and white
26:07SPEAKERor the light intensity parts of the picture
26:12SPEAKERseparately from the color information, the chroma.
26:14SPEAKERSo luminance is the,
26:16SPEAKERluma or luminance is the light and dark,
26:18SPEAKERchroma is the color.
26:20SPEAKERAnd typically, this split in beta
26:23SPEAKERis pretty representative.
26:27SPEAKERIt's 250 lines of luma resolution, the black and white,
26:30SPEAKER'cause that's what our eyes are more sensitive to,
26:32SPEAKERand 30 lines equivalent of chroma.
26:36SPEAKERSo if we're talking about a digital image,
26:38SPEAKERit would be 333 by 486 pixels of luminance,
26:42SPEAKER40 by 486 of chroma.
26:44SPEAKER- Yeah, I thought this 40 by 486 in the notes was a typo.
26:47SPEAKERLike, I would never have guessed the ratio was that big.
26:51SPEAKER- I mean, if you think about it,
26:53SPEAKERwe're just getting the color blobs in the right spot,
26:55SPEAKERand then your brain looks at what's light and what's dark,
26:58SPEAKERand it works itself out.
26:59SPEAKER- Yeah, that makes sense.
27:00SPEAKERI think we've talked about this before.
27:02SPEAKERI figured it was kind of a,
27:02SPEAKERthat's a cognitive, neurological perception thing, right?
27:06SPEAKERThe brain just kind of makes it work.
27:08SPEAKER- It's that our brains are really good
27:09SPEAKERat detecting light and dark spots from each other,
27:11SPEAKERand kind of crappy at color, is my understanding.
27:14SPEAKER- Sure.
27:15SPEAKER- And so these are,
27:17SPEAKERthis information's contained in some bands,
27:19SPEAKERin some bands on the tape.
27:21SPEAKERSo a certain number of megahertz goes to luminance,
27:23SPEAKERa certain number of megahertz goes to chroma,
27:25SPEAKERand then a little bit goes to audio.
27:27SPEAKERThe higher quality, I argue,
27:30SPEAKERis based entirely on the right head speed of the player
27:32SPEAKERspinning faster than VHS,
27:34SPEAKERwhich theoretically gave the player more bandwidth.
27:37SPEAKERIt had a little bit more resolution, but not that much.
27:41SPEAKERBut the main thing, well, okay, so there's two things.
27:45SPEAKEROne is that the reason it's called Betamax
27:47SPEAKERis because the mechanism that the tape head uses to,
27:52SPEAKERthat pulls, the mechanism that pulls the tape
27:55SPEAKERout of the machine basically jammed a thing up
27:58SPEAKERin the hole in the back of the tape cassette,
28:03SPEAKERand then pulled the tape all the way around the reed head
28:06SPEAKERso it could get to both the inside and the outside,
28:08SPEAKERand it made a shape that looked like the Greek letter beta.
28:13SPEAKER- Okay.
28:14SPEAKER- In the inside the machine,
28:15SPEAKERif you look at it from the top down.
28:16SPEAKER- Sure, that's as good a reason to name it that as any.
28:19SPEAKER- I'm gonna put some show notes in here.
28:20SPEAKERThere's a link in the show notes to some YouTube videos
28:23SPEAKERthat show the transport mechanisms.
28:25SPEAKERTechnology Connections has done a bunch on this
28:28SPEAKERover the years, but let's see if I can embed the video.
28:32SPEAKERI should have done this before we started.
28:35SPEAKERIt's a really good, it's really amazing.
28:38SPEAKERI had no idea how these worked,
28:40SPEAKERand it makes me really appreciate the front loading VCR
28:42SPEAKERas an innovation more than I ever did as a youth.
28:47SPEAKERNow, as is often the case, the VHS format,
28:51SPEAKERit does basically the same thing.
28:54SPEAKERThey started working in the early '70s and released in '76.
28:58SPEAKERIt was pitched as an open competitor
29:01SPEAKERto Sony's licensed Betamax so you could join the coalition
29:04SPEAKERand get cross-licensing or whatever
29:06SPEAKERwith everybody else who's working in there.
29:08SPEAKER- Versus, just to be clear, to make a beta deck,
29:10SPEAKERyou had to pay Sony royalties, licensing fees?
29:13SPEAKER- You had to pay licensing on each unit,
29:15SPEAKERsold probably to Sony.
29:18SPEAKERThey had 12 objectives when they set out to make this,
29:20SPEAKERJVC did this, started this.
29:22SPEAKERThey wanted the system to be compatible
29:23SPEAKERwith any ordinary TVs.
29:25SPEAKERThe picture quality had to be similar
29:26SPEAKERto a normal air broadcast.
29:28SPEAKERThe tape must have at least
29:29SPEAKERa two-hour-long recording capacity.
29:31SPEAKERTapes must be interchangeable between machines.
29:33SPEAKERThat means you can record on yours and hand it to me
29:35SPEAKERand I can play it on mine.
29:37SPEAKERThe overall system should be versatile,
29:39SPEAKERmeaning it can be scaled and expanded,
29:41SPEAKERsuch as adding video cameras
29:42SPEAKERor dubbing between two recorders, et cetera.
29:45SPEAKERRecorders should be affordable, easy to operate,
29:47SPEAKERand have low maintenance costs.
29:49SPEAKERAnd the recorders must be capable
29:50SPEAKERof being produced in high volume.
29:52SPEAKERTheir parts must be interchangeable
29:53SPEAKERand they must be easy to service.
29:55SPEAKERPretty straightforward stuff.
29:56SPEAKER- Yeah, it's like a noble list of goals
29:57SPEAKERwith the possible exception of picture quality
29:59SPEAKERmust be similar to a normal air over-the-air broadcast,
30:02SPEAKERwhich like kind of stretching the definition
30:05SPEAKERof similar a little bit, but sure.
30:07SPEAKER- I mean, look, the VHS recording was,
30:12SPEAKERin the era of the tubes they were making in 1976,
30:16SPEAKERprobably looked similar.
30:17SPEAKER- Yeah, fair.
30:18SPEAKER- I think as the tubes got higher dot pitches
30:20SPEAKERand stuff like that and the TVs got bigger,
30:23SPEAKERthe weaknesses of them started to show themselves more,
30:26SPEAKERwould be my guess.
30:27SPEAKER- Yeah, that's fair.
30:27SPEAKERI just looked up what became of JVC,
30:29SPEAKERif they're still a thing or not.
30:30SPEAKERThey technically are, but they're part of,
30:33SPEAKERthey're now part of JVC Kenwood Holdings Incorporated.
30:37SPEAKERI don't feel like JVC is much of a consumer-facing brand.
30:41SPEAKER- I do not think that they are anymore.
30:46SPEAKERSo let's see, they did this, they released these in 1976.
30:51SPEAKERThe image quality, again, image quality format
30:54SPEAKERis a function of the bandwidth they used in the recording,
30:56SPEAKERmultiplied by the tape speed.
31:00SPEAKERIt works, the other thing that uses the chroma sub-sampling
31:04SPEAKERwhere it separates out the brightness and color info
31:07SPEAKERis the JPEG spec.
31:08SPEAKER- Yeah, it's funny, I just saw that in a YouTube video
31:11SPEAKERlike two days before we recorded this podcast.
31:13SPEAKERSomebody talking about that's exactly how a JPEG
31:15SPEAKERimage compression works.
31:17SPEAKER- So the other thing that happened here
31:19SPEAKERis that they allowed for different tape speeds.
31:23SPEAKERSo they identified early that users
31:27SPEAKERwere going to care about a number
31:29SPEAKERand they picked the right one.
31:31SPEAKERSo they, by doing standard play, medium play,
31:36SPEAKERextended play, and super long play speeds--
31:38SPEAKER- I was just gonna, you didn't write them in the notes,
31:40SPEAKERI was gonna challenge you to name them, but you just did.
31:43SPEAKERExcept, was there an MP?
31:44SPEAKERI know there was standard play, long play.
31:47SPEAKER- It was either long play or extended play,
31:49SPEAKERdepending on your VCR, I think, probably.
31:51SPEAKERBut the point was, you either got two hours,
31:54SPEAKERfour hours, or six hours on a standard tape.
31:57SPEAKERAnd that difference in record speed,
32:00SPEAKERmeaning by running the tape through the head slower
32:02SPEAKERand thus degrading your picture quality even further,
32:05SPEAKERbut letting you jam more stuff onto your $5 tape,
32:08SPEAKERblank tape, turned out to be a real important decision.
32:12SPEAKER- Yeah, you're really taking me back.
32:15SPEAKERNow that I think about it, for me, it was six hours
32:18SPEAKERper tape or nothing, it was just like,
32:19SPEAKERI've got to cram as much as I can on this thing.
32:21SPEAKER- I set The Simpsons to record every day.
32:24SPEAKERIt was on three times a day when I was in college,
32:26SPEAKERand I just recorded an hour and a half of Simpsons
32:29SPEAKERevery single day.
32:29SPEAKER- Did you end up with a full library eventually,
32:31SPEAKERor close to it?
32:33SPEAKER- I had a big chunk from the syndication,
32:36SPEAKERwhatever was in syndication at the time,
32:38SPEAKERthrough season nine or something.
32:40SPEAKER- That's pretty impressive.
32:41SPEAKERI checked, it's SP, LP, and EP.
32:44SPEAKER- SP, LP, and EP, okay.
32:45SPEAKER- So I'm pretty sure my VCR, which I have behind me,
32:50SPEAKERwas super long play, is what they called that.
32:53SPEAKER- Wait, like your classic, your VCR of record,
32:57SPEAKERthe VCR of antiquity, still have?
33:00SPEAKER- I have the VCR that I bought
33:02SPEAKERwhen I went to college right here.
33:03SPEAKER- Okay, well now I've got to fill,
33:05SPEAKER'cause he's turning around and picking up
33:06SPEAKERwhat is sure to be a chunky piece of '80s, maybe '90s.
33:11SPEAKERYou went to college.
33:12SPEAKER- '90s, thank you.
33:13SPEAKER- Sure.
33:14SPEAKER- So here, I want to give you the sound, though.
33:16SPEAKERI want to play the sound that plays
33:19SPEAKERwhen you load the tape into this thing,
33:20SPEAKER'cause it's a good sound.
33:21SPEAKER- That's a reasonably svelte piece of electronics
33:24SPEAKERfor the era.
33:25SPEAKERHere we go.
33:28SPEAKER- Did it come through or no?
33:29SPEAKER- Yes, that was pretty good.
33:30SPEAKER- I'm gonna put one in.
33:37SPEAKERSo that sound is a much simpler tape extraction mechanism.
33:43SPEAKERThey had a larger groove in the back of VHS tapes.
33:47SPEAKERSorry, smaller groove, but with multiple places.
33:49SPEAKERAnd what happened was these pins went up
33:51SPEAKERand pulled it up and wrapped it around the tape head.
33:53SPEAKERSo a lot less tape had to come out,
33:55SPEAKERwhich meant there had to be a lot less slack
33:57SPEAKERat the beginning and end of the tape.
33:58SPEAKER- Interesting.
33:59SPEAKER- But it also meant that it was more straightforward.
34:04SPEAKERIt was just a more straightforward mechanism, frankly.
34:06SPEAKERThe cartridges were a little bit bigger
34:08SPEAKERfor the VHS than the Betamax, physically.
34:12SPEAKERAnd yeah, like I said, they did the multiple speeds.
34:15SPEAKERBut I would encourage everybody
34:17SPEAKERto load up this YouTube link in the chat.
34:22SPEAKERI'm gonna send it to you right now, Brad.
34:24SPEAKER- In the show notes.
34:25SPEAKER- In the show notes, in the chat.
34:27SPEAKERJesus, I'm so tired.
34:29SPEAKER- Too much time on Twitch.
34:30SPEAKER- Too many words today.
34:31SPEAKERLet me find the right time code for you here.
34:34SPEAKER- Did you just say too many words?
34:35SPEAKER- Too many words today.
34:36SPEAKER- Can we sidebar here?
34:38SPEAKERThis just occurred to me.
34:39SPEAKERDo you think it's possible that you have a,
34:40SPEAKERI want a number of words that you can speak per day
34:43SPEAKERand then they start going in random directions after that?
34:47SPEAKER- That is 100%, not just a theory.
34:52SPEAKERI would say that is fact.
34:53SPEAKEROkay, so I'm gonna send you this link.
34:55SPEAKERWhat I'm gonna do is I'm gonna do a countdown
34:58SPEAKERand I think we should watch this together
34:59SPEAKER'cause it's pretty good and it's gonna blow your mind.
35:02SPEAKEROkay, in three, two, one, play.
35:06SPEAKER- Now we're gonna watch what happens
35:08SPEAKERwhen all these mechanisms fire out.
35:10SPEAKERYou'll first see the loading motor start to turn down here.
35:13SPEAKER- That's a lot of parts.
35:14SPEAKER- And then you'll see the tape get extracted
35:15SPEAKERfrom the cassette and wound around the head drum.
35:18SPEAKERSo as I put the cassette in, there goes the cassette
35:24SPEAKERand the tape is pulled around the head drum, 180 degrees.
35:28SPEAKERThe head drum spins at 1800 revolutions per minute.
35:32SPEAKER- 1800 RPMs.
35:35SPEAKERThat guy talks exactly like someone who makes a habit
35:39SPEAKERof getting inside VCRs.
35:40SPEAKER- We have a picture on the screen.
35:42SPEAKER- Yeah, that's it.
35:44SPEAKERYou can stop now, but yeah.
35:45SPEAKER- You're right though.
35:46SPEAKERLike that's very little slack to have to pull.
35:47SPEAKERLike it's only maybe what, a couple inches maybe?
35:51SPEAKERCan't see much scale reference in here
35:54SPEAKER'cause it's up close,
35:54SPEAKERbut it doesn't look like it's very little tape
35:57SPEAKERthat has to be pulled out from the tape.
35:59SPEAKER- Okay, so the VHS one, it's really straightforward.
36:02SPEAKERIt grabs it, it wraps around the read-write head
36:05SPEAKERand it pulls out like an extra five inches of tape probably.
36:09SPEAKERThe beta one has a pin that grabs the tape
36:14SPEAKERand wraps it all the way around.
36:15SPEAKERIt needs to have 180 degrees of contact
36:17SPEAKERwith the read-write head in order for the machine to work.
36:19SPEAKERAnd since the technology underlying the VHS is the same,
36:23SPEAKERthe VHS uses two pins to pull it around
36:25SPEAKERand pulls it just past the midway point
36:27SPEAKERof the read-write head drum,
36:29SPEAKERwhich is a cylinder in the middle of the player.
36:32SPEAKERThe beta one has one pin on a gear
36:35SPEAKERthat goes around the outside edge of the read-write head
36:39SPEAKERand pulls it through like 270 degrees
36:41SPEAKERof that read-write circle
36:43SPEAKERso that a big giant chunk of tape ends up rubbed
36:47SPEAKERagainst the drum,
36:47SPEAKERwhich spins again at like 1800 revolutions per minute.
36:51SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, if you visualize how much tape
36:53SPEAKERyou would need to pull out to be able to make
36:55SPEAKERa reasonable looking reek letter beta.
36:57SPEAKER- It's like twice as much as the VHS,
36:59SPEAKERmaybe a little bit more.
37:00SPEAKER- Yeah, you can imagine how much more tape
37:01SPEAKERwould have to come out just to do that.
37:03SPEAKER- Well, and the knock-on effect of that is that it means
37:06SPEAKERthat in a cartridge that starts smaller
37:08SPEAKERthan the VHS cartridge, there's extra space that's used
37:12SPEAKERfor the extra slack that has to be at the beginning
37:14SPEAKERbefore the first recording to give enough blank,
37:19SPEAKERnot tape, tape at that point.
37:21SPEAKERAnd then there's a whole bunch of other stuff they do
37:23SPEAKERto make sure that it didn't crash
37:25SPEAKERinto the end of the tape and all that stuff.
37:27SPEAKERThe Technology Connections video is definitely
37:28SPEAKERworth watching if you're interested in this stuff.
37:30SPEAKERThere's a bunch of weird esoterica about how these,
37:33SPEAKERhow both of these formats work
37:35SPEAKERthat make it a very interesting read.
37:37SPEAKER- Yeah, that channel does good work.
37:39SPEAKER- So, okay, so that's where the tapes are out.
37:42SPEAKEREverything's great.
37:44SPEAKERNone of the content creators are upset about the fact
37:46SPEAKERthat you can suddenly copy movies and TV shows at home,
37:49SPEAKERright?
37:50SPEAKER- Definitely, they don't want to exercise an iron grip
37:52SPEAKERover how people, how and when and how often people
37:54SPEAKERwatch their stuff without paying for it.
37:56SPEAKER- Turns out that's not right.
37:57SPEAKER- Sony was sued by Universal Studios in 1984,
38:02SPEAKERand it went all the way to the Supreme Court.
38:04SPEAKERThis is the famous Betamax case is what people call this.
38:07SPEAKERAnd it resulted in a legal determination
38:11SPEAKERthat home taping of TV shows for the purposes
38:15SPEAKERof time shifting them was legal,
38:17SPEAKERwas a legal fair use of copyrighted materials
38:21SPEAKERbecause they were significant that,
38:23SPEAKERand thus that home video cassette recorders
38:26SPEAKERwere legal technologies because of significant
38:29SPEAKERnon-infringing uses.
38:30SPEAKER- Can you imagine how different the history,
38:32SPEAKERthe entire history of home media would be
38:35SPEAKERif this decision had gone the other way?
38:37SPEAKER- I mean, I think that we would have had,
38:41SPEAKERthere would have been a quashing effect on a lot of,
38:44SPEAKERon computing.
38:45SPEAKER- Yes.
38:46SPEAKER- Like the internet and computing would have had problems
38:48SPEAKERif it was determined that we could ban entire branches
38:50SPEAKERof technology because of copyright infringement
38:52SPEAKERagainst movie studios.
38:53SPEAKER- Right, like how many innovations and inventions
38:55SPEAKERjust would never have even been pursued
38:57SPEAKERbecause of this legal sort of Damocles
38:59SPEAKERhanging over everything.
39:00SPEAKER- And just to be clear though,
39:02SPEAKERit wasn't that there was an expectation
39:04SPEAKERthere was gonna be a ban.
39:06SPEAKERThe idea was that the studios felt that the manufacturers
39:09SPEAKERwere liable for any copyright infringement committed
39:12SPEAKERby purchasers of the devices,
39:14SPEAKERwhich would have not banned them for a legal sense,
39:18SPEAKERbut would have prevented them from making them
39:19SPEAKERor let them, required them to do major work
39:22SPEAKERto make sure that you couldn't actually record
39:24SPEAKERanything useful with them.
39:25SPEAKER- Right.
39:26SPEAKER- So, okay, so that, the good news is
39:29SPEAKERthe Supreme Court went the right way on that.
39:31SPEAKERIt established the fair use doctrine for,
39:33SPEAKERthat allowed you to copy media
39:34SPEAKERthat you would have had legal access to,
39:37SPEAKERwhich just to be clear, not a law,
39:38SPEAKERit's just the Supreme Court said,
39:39SPEAKER"Hey, this is cool," 40 years ago.
39:42SPEAKERAnd like that's never backfired on us in any way, shape,
39:45SPEAKERor form when the Supreme Court says something's okay
39:46SPEAKERand then changes their mind later.
39:49SPEAKERI'm looking at the camera.
39:50SPEAKERBut yeah, so that's basically where the tape stuff
39:54SPEAKERends now.
39:55SPEAKER- But it did not stop them from developing
39:57SPEAKERcopy protection for tapes anyway.
39:58SPEAKER- I was gonna say that was the next step
40:00SPEAKERis that they did have to develop copy protection for tapes.
40:02SPEAKERSo the Macrovision analog/analog protection system
40:07SPEAKERwas a simple, relatively simple copy protection
40:09SPEAKERthat rendered copies garbled or unwatchable
40:12SPEAKERby jacking up the automatic gain circuit
40:14SPEAKERon recording devices.
40:16SPEAKERWhat this means is in the blank space,
40:18SPEAKERon each analog frame, there was some blank space
40:21SPEAKERabove and below the picture that was used for things
40:24SPEAKERlike v-sync and gain and stuff like that.
40:28SPEAKERWhat they would do is spike the gain signal
40:31SPEAKERon a purchase tape.
40:34SPEAKERIf you bought a copy of Tango and Cash,
40:37SPEAKERthey would have the tape that you bought
40:39SPEAKERhad these juiced gain pulses on there
40:44SPEAKERthat would jack up the tracking on subsequent recordings.
40:48SPEAKERSo the first one would look fine
40:49SPEAKERwhen you played it on most VCRs.
40:51SPEAKEROf course, it didn't work on all VCRs.
40:52SPEAKERThis would jack up some VCRs.
40:54SPEAKERBut on the second one, it would say,
40:56SPEAKERhey, this is not something we can do.
40:58SPEAKERThis signal means it's not legal for us
41:00SPEAKERto make a copy of it.
41:01SPEAKERIt just wouldn't work, or it would be badly corrupted.
41:03SPEAKER- I have not heard the word Macrovision in 25 years or more.
41:09SPEAKER- I feel like there was a version of Macrovision
41:10SPEAKERon a lot of DVDs in addition to the DVD CCA stuff.
41:13SPEAKER- That's possible, but from the early to mid '90s,
41:16SPEAKERthat really brought back some memories of frustration.
41:19SPEAKERIt sounds like a dirty word.
41:20SPEAKER- Yeah, so there were variants of both Betamax and VHS.
41:24SPEAKERBetamax had Super Betamax,
41:26SPEAKERwhich was mostly a professional format,
41:28SPEAKERso we're not, or sorry, BetaCam rather.
41:30SPEAKER- Yeah, BetaCam, which was higher quality.
41:34SPEAKER- Higher quality, used a single cog wheel
41:36SPEAKERto drive tape through some sort of wizardry.
41:38SPEAKERI don't know how that would have worked.
41:40SPEAKERIt was used in pro environments
41:41SPEAKERbecause they wanted better than NTSC quality
41:46SPEAKERso that they could do edits without any loss
41:48SPEAKERby the time it went, without any noticeable image loss
41:51SPEAKERfor the NTSC outputs.
41:53SPEAKER- Yeah, 120 lines of chroma versus the, what is it,
41:56SPEAKER30 or 40 in the consumer Betamax?
41:58SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, and it's worth mentioning
42:01SPEAKERall of these analog formats.
42:03SPEAKERWhen you would do a copy of a copy,
42:04SPEAKERthere's degradation each time.
42:07SPEAKERSo by the time you got to a second or third generation output
42:11SPEAKERthere was a noticeable decrease in the quality,
42:13SPEAKERwhich is why you use professional quality cameras
42:17SPEAKEReven in the pre-HD days that had higher resolutions,
42:20SPEAKERlike these Betacam devices.
42:21SPEAKERThere was also VHSC for the home market.
42:24SPEAKERThere was a Betamax camcorders as well.
42:28SPEAKERThere weren't very many of them.
42:29SPEAKERThey didn't last for very long.
42:32SPEAKERBut VHSC was a electrically compatible, mechanical,
42:37SPEAKERsmaller mechanical VHS tape that was basically,
42:41SPEAKERthat you could basically put it into a mechanical caddy
42:44SPEAKERthat had a little motor in it that would thread,
42:47SPEAKERpull the tape out of the baby cartridge
42:49SPEAKERand put it where the big cartridge was expected
42:51SPEAKERto have tape in the player when you put it in the caddy
42:54SPEAKERand then you could just plug that caddy
42:55SPEAKERinto a normal VHS player and it would work right.
42:59SPEAKER- That's cool.
42:59SPEAKERI don't know if I ever saw VHS-C anywhere.
43:03SPEAKER- That was mostly used in post-shoulder mounted camcorders
43:09SPEAKERwhen you had a handicam-sized camcorder.
43:12SPEAKERThose were all VHS-C.
43:13SPEAKERAnd then, in 1987, there was also Super VHS,
43:17SPEAKERwhich was available everywhere.
43:20SPEAKERDidn't really sell a whole lot of them, apparently.
43:23SPEAKERIt upped the resolution on VHS to 400 lines effective,
43:28SPEAKERwhich was 420 minus the V-Sync area.
43:33SPEAKERAnd like Betacam, it was higher than NTSC resolution,
43:36SPEAKERwhich made it look good and it was viable
43:39SPEAKERfor professional newsroom edits and stuff like that.
43:43SPEAKERIt got used in learning environments a lot
43:46SPEAKER'cause it was cheaper than Betacam,
43:48SPEAKERbut it provided similar results.
43:51SPEAKERAnd it worked the same way as VHS.
43:53SPEAKERIn fact, you could play VHS tapes in a Super VHS player.
44:00SPEAKERYou generally couldn't play Super VHS tapes in a VHS player
44:04SPEAKERunless you had a special kind of VHS player
44:06SPEAKERthat also understood how the Super VHS tapes worked,
44:11SPEAKERwhich would make them backwards compatible in some odd way.
44:17SPEAKERThere was also Super VHS-ET,
44:19SPEAKERwhich lets you record on traditional VHS tapes,
44:21SPEAKERwhich were much cheaper, but at a higher quality
44:24SPEAKERthan you could on a normal VHS tape, usually.
44:27SPEAKER- Yeah, this says Super VHS required S-video
44:30SPEAKERfor best results, which who had S-video access in 1987?
44:36SPEAKER- Hardly anyone, but SCART was taking off
44:38SPEAKERin Europe by then. - In Europe, yes.
44:40SPEAKERSo America got completely screwed on the SCART front
44:43SPEAKERfor whatever reason, but.
44:45SPEAKER- Well, but so we had, I had S-video
44:48SPEAKERby the time I bought my TV in 1993,
44:50SPEAKERprobably when I went to college, my first TV.
44:53SPEAKERSo it wasn't too far off.
44:55SPEAKER- I was just going through old CRTs
44:57SPEAKERwhen I was at home last month,
44:59SPEAKERand I didn't, I didn't, 'cause I still have,
45:01SPEAKERwe still have all these TVs,
45:02SPEAKER'cause I begged my parents not to throw them out.
45:05SPEAKERI did not get a TV with S-video on it until 2001,
45:10SPEAKERI believe. - Wow.
45:11SPEAKER- Yeah.
45:11SPEAKER- So Xbox GameCube era, huh?
45:13SPEAKER- Yes, PS2, I distinctly remember getting that TV
45:16SPEAKERand playing Final Fantasy X on it,
45:17SPEAKERif that tells you anything.
45:19SPEAKER- Well, so the interesting thing about the video formats
45:23SPEAKERis in the beginning of this time period,
45:25SPEAKERin the early '80s, you were probably using
45:27SPEAKERan FM modulator plugged into the antenna
45:29SPEAKERand turning your TV to channel three or four.
45:31SPEAKER- Yes. - Or two, I guess.
45:33SPEAKER- By the end of this, RCA inputs were pretty common
45:36SPEAKERon TVs by the late '80s.
45:38SPEAKERSo you could get a signal that put the luminance and chroma
45:42SPEAKERon two wires and blasted them from your VHS player
45:47SPEAKERto your TV and let you record inputs as well, same way.
45:51SPEAKER- Yeah, and then what is S-video's, like six pins?
45:53SPEAKERIs that right?
45:54SPEAKER- S-video's five or six, yeah,
45:56SPEAKERand it separates out the luminance and chroma, I believe,
45:59SPEAKERbut not onto separate signals with a ground,
46:02SPEAKERI think is what it is.
46:03SPEAKERBut then you need component or RGB or SCART
46:06SPEAKERto split the colors out individually.
46:08SPEAKER- Yeah, to split the individual colors out.
46:10SPEAKER- This is for later.
46:12SPEAKERI talked about this on the "Nextlander" Ramblecast recently.
46:14SPEAKERI don't think I told you one of the old trinitrons
46:16SPEAKERin the basement of my parents is one of the ones
46:19SPEAKERthat's easy to mod for SCART.
46:20SPEAKER- Wow, really? - Yeah.
46:21SPEAKER- Oh, that's amazing. - It's quite easy.
46:23SPEAKERI mean, I'm still afraid to open up a CRT,
46:25SPEAKEReven though the thing hasn't been turned on in years,
46:27SPEAKERto be fair.
46:28SPEAKER- Well, if you have a screwdriver
46:30SPEAKERand are okay discarding capacitors, not bad.
46:32SPEAKER- Yes, I'm gonna have to learn a lot of
46:35SPEAKERfundamental electrical concepts
46:36SPEAKERbefore I open up that TV someday
46:38SPEAKERand try to mod SCART into it.
46:40SPEAKER- You're probably, I mean,
46:43SPEAKERwhen was the last time it was plugged in, like 30 years ago?
46:45SPEAKER- No, it was in use probably in the last decade
46:47SPEAKERat some point. - Oh, okay.
46:48SPEAKERYeah, you're in the danger zone then still.
46:51SPEAKER- The actual mod looks pretty easy
46:52SPEAKERin terms of soldering and stuff.
46:54SPEAKER- Brad, we have one simple rule here,
46:56SPEAKERwhich is don't electrocute yourself.
46:57SPEAKER- Okay, fine, if you insist.
47:00SPEAKER- So just to put a bow
47:03SPEAKERon the VHS beta conversation,
47:07SPEAKERwho won?
47:09SPEAKERThey sold a buttload of VHS players
47:11SPEAKERand they sold some Betamax players.
47:13SPEAKER- I don't think I've ever seen a beta deck.
47:15SPEAKERThat's not, I take it back, I worked at GameSpot,
47:17SPEAKERso there were Betacam tapes everywhere for broadcast stuff,
47:20SPEAKERbut I've never seen like a beta player
47:21SPEAKERin somebody's house ever.
47:23SPEAKER- I remember seeing them when I was a really little kid,
47:25SPEAKERthen they all went away.
47:26SPEAKERYeah, and I never ever went to a video store
47:28SPEAKERwhere you could rent beta tapes.
47:29SPEAKERLike by the time I was going to video stores,
47:31SPEAKERthat was all, they were all gone.
47:33SPEAKER- Yes.
47:34SPEAKER- To give you an idea of what was going on,
47:35SPEAKERin 1980, VHS had a 60% market share,
47:38SPEAKERwhich was the, I think the 40% mark for beta
47:41SPEAKERwas the peak for them.
47:45SPEAKERAnd that was before the real explosion in sales
47:47SPEAKERhappened in the mid-80s.
47:49SPEAKER- You know, the expectation of acquiring licensing fees
47:52SPEAKERfor this whole thing seems maybe a little foolhardy
47:55SPEAKERin retrospect on Sony's part.
47:56SPEAKER- Well, when we talk about digital formats,
47:59SPEAKERwe'll get to the time that it worked out for them.
48:02SPEAKER- Sure.
48:02SPEAKER- But I think you're probably right.
48:06SPEAKERIt definitely didn't work out in this case.
48:07SPEAKERThey won the quality battle kind of and lost the war.
48:12SPEAKER- But just barely, right?
48:13SPEAKERSo like the thing, that's the thing I've been waiting
48:16SPEAKERto say at the end of this conversation is,
48:18SPEAKERI mean, this podcast is good at making me check
48:21SPEAKERlike sort of, not urban legend,
48:23SPEAKERbut like apocryphal stories about technology and stuff
48:26SPEAKERon a regular basis, but this is a big one
48:29SPEAKERwhere I've always assumed that that story was correct
48:32SPEAKERabout beta being like profoundly superior to VHS
48:37SPEAKERor at least like appreciably so.
48:39SPEAKERYou know, like the story was always like,
48:40SPEAKERoh, beta was better, VHS won out by being cheaper.
48:43SPEAKERYou know, like the good enough thing always wins
48:45SPEAKERover the best thing, but this comparison makes them sound
48:49SPEAKERlike they were on basically footing.
48:51SPEAKER- Yeah, I think, so Technology Connections talks about this
48:53SPEAKERquite a bit in their VHS and beta combos.
48:57SPEAKERI unfortunately don't have a beta player here
49:00SPEAKERto do side-by-sides on.
49:02SPEAKERI think in the modern context
49:03SPEAKERwhere we're used to looking at 4K plus video,
49:06SPEAKERI think both of them are going to look terrible
49:08SPEAKERin a way that is difficult to describe
49:10SPEAKERwhen you haven't looked at VHS video in a long time.
49:12SPEAKER- Yeah.
49:14SPEAKER- But I do, I think that,
49:16SPEAKERso I did some more research on this
49:18SPEAKER'cause speaking of urban legends,
49:19SPEAKERthe thing I had always heard was that beta lost
49:22SPEAKERbecause Sony wouldn't allow pornography on the platform.
49:25SPEAKER- That's the other one that, yes,
49:26SPEAKERI've heard that one for years too.
49:29SPEAKER- Technology Connections said that was bunk
49:30SPEAKERand I did some further digging and after reading more,
49:34SPEAKERI think they're probably right.
49:37SPEAKERMainly because Sony didn't, Sony sold tapes, right?
49:40SPEAKERThey didn't license the tapes
49:42SPEAKERto the people who made the content.
49:45SPEAKERThere was nothing stopping people
49:46SPEAKERfrom putting pornography on Betamax
49:48SPEAKERother than nobody had Betamax players
49:49SPEAKERthat they could sell pornography to.
49:51SPEAKER- Sure.
49:52SPEAKERI think that the fact that the tapes
49:57SPEAKERcouldn't hold a feature film for the most part
49:59SPEAKERwas probably the deal breaker for Betamax
50:02SPEAKERas a going concern.
50:04SPEAKER- Yeah, like I said, being able to fit six hours on a tape
50:07SPEAKERwas everything at that time.
50:09SPEAKER- But also being able to fit Star Wars on a tape
50:13SPEAKERor Jaws on a tape was important, right?
50:16SPEAKERYou couldn't get a copy of Batman
50:17SPEAKERbecause Batman wouldn't fit on one Betamax tape.
50:20SPEAKERYou needed two.
50:21SPEAKER- It wasn't until much later on when Heat came out
50:23SPEAKERand Michael Mann was like,
50:26SPEAKER"Yo, we gotta get this thing out,
50:28SPEAKER"but I'm not letting you EP this.
50:30SPEAKER"This has gotta be SP all the way through."
50:32SPEAKERSo we had two tape sets of,
50:34SPEAKERI think Heat and The Godfather
50:35SPEAKERwere the two VHS movies I bought
50:37SPEAKERthat had two tape versions, yeah.
50:41SPEAKER- First thing, right?
50:42SPEAKER- It was maybe Lawrence of Arabia.
50:44SPEAKERI can't remember.
50:45SPEAKERAnyway. - Yeah, yes.
50:46SPEAKER- The upshot was the VHS one
50:49SPEAKERbecause you could buy a six hour tape.
50:51SPEAKERI think that's probably fair.
50:52SPEAKER- Yes, VHS one and then enjoyed,
50:54SPEAKERat least in the United States,
50:55SPEAKERenjoyed pretty much unchallenged market dominance
50:57SPEAKERuntil the late '90s.
50:59SPEAKERDVD came out in '97, but it was still a year or two
51:02SPEAKERbefore that really started penetrating.
51:03SPEAKERSo VHS was big for a long time.
51:06SPEAKER- It took a while before DVD players were cheap enough
51:08SPEAKERthat a lot of people had them.
51:09SPEAKERBut in the meantime, before DVD,
51:12SPEAKERthe people who cared about quality had another alternative,
51:15SPEAKERmaybe two. - Way before DVD, actually.
51:17SPEAKERThat was another thing that blew me away
51:19SPEAKERin researching this episode was how early laser disc
51:21SPEAKERwas a thing.
51:23SPEAKER- So laser disc is, like, the interesting thing about this
51:25SPEAKERis that the time from launch to mass,
51:28SPEAKERto any kind of mass acceptance on all of this stuff
51:30SPEAKERwas really slow by modern standards.
51:33SPEAKERLike it took a long time before VHS,
51:37SPEAKERbetween when VHS launched in 1976 to 1983 and 1984,
51:41SPEAKERwhen there were VHS players in a majority of US households.
51:45SPEAKERLaser disc, likewise, launched in 1978.
51:48SPEAKER- It was originally under the name Discovision?
51:50SPEAKER- Yes, yes, that was- - I did not know that.
51:52SPEAKER- Uh-huh, yes, MCA, also remember MCA?
51:56SPEAKER- Yeah, Rip MCA.
51:57SPEAKER- Speaking of old media companies
51:59SPEAKERthat don't seem to be around anymore.
52:00SPEAKER- Oh, I thought you were talking about the Beastie Boy.
52:02SPEAKER- Oh, no, but yes, yes, laser disc originally was marketed,
52:05SPEAKERbrought to market and marketed by MCA
52:07SPEAKERunder the name of Discovision. (laughs)
52:10SPEAKER- That's amazing.
52:11SPEAKER- Before Pioneer later came along
52:13SPEAKERand I believe bought all the rights to the format.
52:15SPEAKERAnd then that's when they renamed it to laser disc
52:17SPEAKERand also used, I believe,
52:18SPEAKERthe term laser vision here and there.
52:20SPEAKER- I wanna know if they had like a thing
52:21SPEAKERthat played at the beginning of every movie
52:23SPEAKERthat was like a da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da,
52:27SPEAKERwith like Discovision swooping in
52:28SPEAKERin like '70s psychedelic text treatment.
52:31SPEAKER- Big mirror ball descending from the ceiling.
52:34SPEAKER- Yeah, crazy motion graphics.
52:35SPEAKER- As part of the, yes, we should do some research on that.
52:39SPEAKERI have no idea of the original, like the R&D,
52:41SPEAKERthe technological development on optical storage technology,
52:45SPEAKERmeaning, you know, like same way CDs work.
52:47SPEAKERWe're talking about a disc with pits and lands, you know,
52:50SPEAKERa little kind of kind of trying to think, not grooves,
52:52SPEAKERbut you know, those are basically like gaps
52:53SPEAKERand high and low elevation basically
52:56SPEAKERon a kind of microscopic scale on the disc,
52:58SPEAKERwhich are read by a laser.
52:59SPEAKERLike that technology goes back to the early '60s
53:02SPEAKERfrom what I saw, like the first work
53:04SPEAKERon the optical and laser storage technology
53:07SPEAKERthat went into laser disc started in like 1963
53:11SPEAKERand then came to market by 1978.
53:13SPEAKERSo like two years after VHS,
53:15SPEAKERlaser disc was on the market, which is crazy to me.
53:18SPEAKER- So is it still doing pits and lands though,
53:20SPEAKERor is it doing an actual analog wave on the disc?
53:23SPEAKER- So that was probably the biggest thing about laser disc
53:26SPEAKERthat I discovered in looking into this,
53:27SPEAKER'cause I've always wondered about that.
53:29SPEAKERSo laser disc used analog audio and video primarily.
53:32SPEAKERAs far as I can tell, it only ever used analog video
53:35SPEAKERand it primarily used analog audio,
53:37SPEAKERbut there were some limited uses of digital audio
53:40SPEAKERon laser disc.
53:41SPEAKER- Did you get Dolby digital, I think on some later,
53:44SPEAKERwhat are the digital Dolby formats?
53:45SPEAKERI don't know that it was actually Dolby digital,
53:47SPEAKERbut you could get one of the digital Dolby audio formats
53:49SPEAKERon some of the later laser discs.
53:51SPEAKER- Might've been like AC3 or something like that.
53:53SPEAKER- That seems right.
53:54SPEAKER- That was a mid eighties digital audio format.
53:57SPEAKERSo the way it works is you're still using pits and lands,
54:00SPEAKERbut it's the spacing between the,
54:03SPEAKERI guess the lands are the raised parts, right?
54:05SPEAKERAnd the pits are the lower parts.
54:07SPEAKERIt's the spacing that describes the kind of,
54:09SPEAKERthe frequency modulation of the analog signal.
54:12SPEAKERSo if you go on Wikipedia,
54:14SPEAKERthere's a nice little overlay that shows the,
54:16SPEAKERwhat are effectively digital pits and lands, right?
54:18SPEAKERThey're just like cliffs, you know,
54:19SPEAKERthat's just like a square wave looking thing,
54:21SPEAKERbut they overlay that with the analog signal.
54:23SPEAKERSo you can see how the signal is transformed or how it,
54:26SPEAKERhow it interprets the spacing,
54:28SPEAKERthe size of the gaps between the raised areas as.
54:31SPEAKER- As like the steepness of the curve or something?
54:34SPEAKER- Yes, basically.
54:35SPEAKERI'm sure there's math going on there that I don't understand,
54:38SPEAKERbut when you look at it visually,
54:40SPEAKERit's actually like pretty, pretty easy to understand.
54:42SPEAKER- Oh, it's like the midpoint of the curve is at the end
54:44SPEAKERof the square waves.
54:46SPEAKER- Yes.
54:47SPEAKER- Wow, that is a trip.
54:48SPEAKER- Right, it's, it's like, and again,
54:49SPEAKERit's something I've always wondered about because to me,
54:51SPEAKERit was like, how could something be like CDs are digital,
54:53SPEAKERDVDs are digital.
54:54SPEAKERHow could you be reading this with a laser in the format
54:56SPEAKERthat optical discs are made in and get analogs information
55:00SPEAKERoff of it and it turns out you're kind of transforming
55:03SPEAKERdigital information into analog frequency modulation.
55:06SPEAKER- Wow, that is crazy.
55:08SPEAKER- Okay.
55:09SPEAKER- It's cool.
55:10SPEAKER- It's like FM radio almost.
55:11SPEAKER- Sure.
55:12SPEAKER- It's frequency modulated.
55:13SPEAKEROkay.
55:14SPEAKER- Yes, yes.
55:15SPEAKER- Weird.
55:16SPEAKER- Yeah, so laser discs, you know, they're giant CDs.
55:19SPEAKERSo everybody knows what a CD is like,
55:21SPEAKERbut laser discs predate CDs by, I don't know how many years,
55:23SPEAKERCDs, I think we're mid eighties, right?
55:26SPEAKER- I think 84, 82, I can't remember.
55:29SPEAKER- But the technology that went into laser discs is what
55:31SPEAKERinformed the creation of the CDD, sorry, the CD, the DVD,
55:35SPEAKERlike all the subsequent optical disc formats kind of
55:38SPEAKERdescended from the tech that was developed for laser discs.
55:40SPEAKERSo those basically were first in the optical storage realm.
55:45SPEAKERThey were 12 inch discs.
55:48SPEAKERFor our purposes, it's easiest to just say that each disc
55:51SPEAKERheld 60 minutes per side in TSC or 64 minutes for PAL.
55:55SPEAKERThere were discs that kind of spun at different speeds
55:57SPEAKERthat held half that much.
55:59SPEAKER- Yeah, so it's about angular velocity versus linear
56:02SPEAKERvelocity of the track and whether it spun faster
56:05SPEAKERwhen you got closer to the center of the spindle or not.
56:08SPEAKER- Right, but for our purposes, in terms of like buying
56:10SPEAKERmovies at retail on laser discs, it was 60 per side,
56:13SPEAKERnot 30 in the US.
56:15SPEAKER- And just for the vast majority of users,
56:18SPEAKERthe thing you used a laser disc for was buying movies
56:21SPEAKERat retail or, yeah.
56:24SPEAKER- So I don't have the chroma and luma information in front
56:26SPEAKERof me, but it was 425 lines for NTSC resolution.
56:30SPEAKERSo substantially better than what you were getting on the
56:33SPEAKERanalog tapes of the time.
56:36SPEAKERHad chapter markers, chapter skipping like DVD would later,
56:40SPEAKERwhich in the eighties was like completely unthinkable
56:43SPEAKERfor anybody who'd ever seen a laser disc.
56:45SPEAKER- It was magic.
56:46SPEAKERThe first time I saw somebody with a laser disc,
56:48SPEAKERI was like, oh wow, this is incredibly cool.
56:50SPEAKER- Yes, originally I would not have expected this.
56:53SPEAKERApparently originally laser discs were cheaper to make
56:55SPEAKERthan tapes.
56:57SPEAKER- That makes sense, right?
56:58SPEAKER- Yeah, when you think about it, you're just stamping
57:00SPEAKERlike a big piece of plastic.
57:01SPEAKERI mean, obviously there are layers there, you know,
57:03SPEAKERthere's a substrate and stuff, but, and you know,
57:05SPEAKERyou talked about how many moving parts are in a tape
57:07SPEAKERand how fragile they are, but that did invert over time.
57:11SPEAKERFrom what I gathered, it seemed like maybe the cost
57:13SPEAKERof materials, like the plastic did not come down
57:15SPEAKERthat rapidly while of course, economies of scale set in
57:18SPEAKERfor VHS tapes that ultimately made them way cheaper to make.
57:23SPEAKER- And also replication, like replication facilities.
57:27SPEAKERCause like to mass produce a tape,
57:29SPEAKERyou had to put a master tape in and then copy a bazillion
57:32SPEAKERcopies off of that at the second.
57:34SPEAKERSo you didn't have a lot of generational loss, right?
57:37SPEAKER- Yeah.
57:38SPEAKER- So, presumably there were facilities where they would load
57:42SPEAKERup a thousand tapes and copy them all at once,
57:45SPEAKERbut I'm sure we didn't have that in the early days.
57:47SPEAKER- Yes, another advantage of laser discs,
57:49SPEAKERwe didn't really talk about this with tapes and this also
57:51SPEAKERis relevant to the next bizarre format we're going to talk
57:54SPEAKERabout is durability because tapes wear out over time.
57:58SPEAKERAlthough I don't think I ever had a retail tape die,
58:01SPEAKERlike break or get truly unwatchable.
58:03SPEAKER- Yeah, you could do it.
58:05SPEAKERIt was hard.
58:06SPEAKERIt usually was a fault of the player.
58:07SPEAKERIt seemed like, or something got jammed in the,
58:09SPEAKERin the cartridge, which would then jam up the works.
58:11SPEAKER- Definitely a tape deck could eat a tape if mechanically
58:14SPEAKERlike the tape could just get pulled out wrong
58:16SPEAKERand ruined that way.
58:17SPEAKERBut I mean, also, I mean just like basic wear and tear
58:19SPEAKERfrom watching too much, like it, I guess it is possible
58:21SPEAKERto wear a tape out eventually.
58:24SPEAKERLaser discs theoretically, like CDs,
58:25SPEAKERif you handle them perfectly in pristine conditions,
58:28SPEAKERthey theoretically will last forever.
58:30SPEAKER- Store vertically in a cool dry place.
58:33SPEAKER- Wait, was that actually a thing, vertical?
58:35SPEAKER- Uh-huh, you gotta keep them vertical 'cause they warp.
58:37SPEAKER- Oh, interesting. - And if they warp,
58:38SPEAKERthey delaminate and if they, and ask me why,
58:40SPEAKERit's 'cause I have a whole big box of them
58:41SPEAKERsitting in my office here.
58:43SPEAKER- Wait, hang on, were you a laser disc guy?
58:45SPEAKER- No, my wife was a laser disc guy.
58:47SPEAKER- Wait, what?
58:48SPEAKER- Yeah. - Wow.
58:49SPEAKERGonna talk to her about that sometime.
58:50SPEAKER- When she was in, when we first started dating,
58:54SPEAKERa friend of hers was like, I'm getting rid of all
58:55SPEAKERmy laser, one of her old roommates was like,
58:57SPEAKERI'm getting rid of my laser discs, does anybody want them?
58:59SPEAKER- Oh, that's even better.
59:00SPEAKER- Fuck yes, I will take them.
59:01SPEAKER- Oh, that's even better than having to buy
59:03SPEAKERall your laser discs yourself is to just be bequeath them.
59:06SPEAKER- Well, she did have to buy them,
59:07SPEAKERbut it was at a fraction of the price.
59:09SPEAKER- Fire sale. - Yeah.
59:10SPEAKERWe have, I think, the Godfather and Jurassic Park,
59:13SPEAKERnot the Japanese Star Warses, but the pre-ruining
59:18SPEAKERStar Warses. - The pre-special edition,
59:20SPEAKERlike the mid-90s. - The mid-90s, normal release,
59:23SPEAKERyeah. - The covers that are like
59:25SPEAKERthe half face of the Stormtrooper, Invader, and Yoda.
59:27SPEAKER- No, these are before that, these are the ones
59:30SPEAKERthat are still the watercolor paintings.
59:32SPEAKER- Oh, like the poster art?
59:33SPEAKER- The poster art, yeah.
59:34SPEAKER- I bought, well, I never owned a laser disc player,
59:37SPEAKERbut actually, I take that back, we have one that we got
59:39SPEAKERfor free that was a hand-me-down from a school now.
59:42SPEAKERMy parents might've gotten rid of it by now,
59:44SPEAKERbut we had at some point a free laser disc player,
59:46SPEAKERbut I did buy those THX Star Wars laser discs
59:49SPEAKERthe very last release before the special editions came out.
59:53SPEAKERThey're still factory sealed, but I think they've been
59:55SPEAKERstored horizontally for 25 years.
59:58SPEAKER- We'll just put 'em on eBay,
59:59SPEAKERyou don't have to tell anybody that, it's fine.
1:00:01SPEAKER- That might be the thing to do.
1:00:03SPEAKER- Like, I think, as with many things around this era,
1:00:07SPEAKERthere are a lot of things that you're told to do
1:00:09SPEAKERthat are unclear what the provenance of that information is.
1:00:12SPEAKERI have no idea if that's how you're actually supposed
1:00:13SPEAKERto handle laser discs.
1:00:15SPEAKERThat's how I was told by my wife,
1:00:17SPEAKERwho is our house's laser disc expert, it turns out.
1:00:20SPEAKER- Yes.
1:00:22SPEAKER- So, the interesting thing about laser discs
1:00:25SPEAKERis they were usually double-sided, right?
1:00:27SPEAKERSo, in order to get two hours of movie on a laser disc,
1:00:31SPEAKERyou had to flip, get out and flip them over,
1:00:34SPEAKERor if you were rich, you had a flipping laser disc player,
1:00:37SPEAKERwhich I assume had mirrors and two read heads, maybe,
1:00:41SPEAKERso the laser would bounce up to the top.
1:00:43SPEAKERI don't know how that would've worked, but.
1:00:45SPEAKER- What precision of mirror do you need?
1:00:47SPEAKERWell, maybe the tolerance was higher,
1:00:49SPEAKERor it was better than I would think.
1:00:50SPEAKERLike, I would think that you would need
1:00:51SPEAKERsome extremely precise mirror to make the laser.
1:00:55SPEAKER- So, I don't know how it worked in laser discs,
1:00:57SPEAKERbut often in analog stuff,
1:00:59SPEAKERthe way the aiming circuit would work
1:01:01SPEAKERis it would be self-correcting based on signal strength.
1:01:05SPEAKERSo, when the signal strength got low, it would move,
1:01:08SPEAKERit would reorient until it was in the right,
1:01:11SPEAKERuntil it was getting stronger signal again,
1:01:13SPEAKERjust as a factor of the circuit design.
1:01:15SPEAKER- That's cool.
1:01:18SPEAKER- So, yeah, laser disc was for a format
1:01:23SPEAKERthat I think it's safe to say probably
1:01:25SPEAKERwas a failure in the long run.
1:01:27SPEAKERIt ran for a long time.
1:01:28SPEAKERPeople were buying laser discs a while into the '90s.
1:01:30SPEAKER- Yeah, Pioneer, actually, I believe I read
1:01:31SPEAKERPioneer stopped making laser disc players only in 2009.
1:01:35SPEAKER- Yeah, the image quality was quite good,
1:01:38SPEAKERespecially compared to VHS and Betacam, or Betamax,
1:01:41SPEAKERbut even compared to early DVD stuff.
1:01:44SPEAKERLike, the difference between the analog video
1:01:47SPEAKERand the MPEG-2 compression,
1:01:50SPEAKERwe would often watch the analog,
1:01:53SPEAKERthe laser disc versions of movies
1:01:55SPEAKERthat we would have in multiple places.
1:01:57SPEAKER- Really?
1:01:57SPEAKER- Because the analog, like, Jurassic Park was much,
1:02:01SPEAKERlike, MPEG-2 was unkind to the dark scenes
1:02:04SPEAKERin Jurassic Park.
1:02:04SPEAKER- Sure.
1:02:05SPEAKER- And it worked pretty well on the laser disc.
1:02:07SPEAKER- Yeah, makes sense.
1:02:09SPEAKERCouple other, like, factoids about laser disc.
1:02:11SPEAKERLike you said, it did not catch on much in North America
1:02:14SPEAKERbeyond kind of like a format for video files.
1:02:16SPEAKERApparently, it was quite big in Asia.
1:02:18SPEAKERLike, it was very, very big in Japan.
1:02:20SPEAKER- Makes sense.
1:02:20SPEAKER- It was cheaper in Japan for whatever reason.
1:02:22SPEAKERHong Kong is another market where it caught on.
1:02:25SPEAKERThere's a lot of anime out there on laser disc.
1:02:27SPEAKERCommon conception or misconception, rather,
1:02:30SPEAKERabout laser discs that I held until I read about this stuff
1:02:33SPEAKERwas that it was read-only.
1:02:34SPEAKER- Oh, no, they were writable ones,
1:02:36SPEAKERbut not many people had them.
1:02:37SPEAKER- Yes, in fact, there were two different
1:02:39SPEAKERrecordable laser disc formats.
1:02:41SPEAKERThey were write-once, read-many formats,
1:02:43SPEAKERso you could only kind of like a CDR.
1:02:46SPEAKERWell, there are rewritable CDRs, but you know what I mean.
1:02:49SPEAKERLike, there were formats where you would buy
1:02:50SPEAKERa blank laser disc and could write to them once
1:02:52SPEAKERand that was it, but from what I read,
1:02:54SPEAKERthose were only ever marketed for professional uses.
1:02:56SPEAKERBasically, they were used for data storage in some cases,
1:02:59SPEAKERbut they never really came to market
1:03:01SPEAKERin any kind of like consumer format.
1:03:02SPEAKER- Yeah, you could do back,
1:03:03SPEAKERlike there were computer backup solutions that used those,
1:03:05SPEAKERas I recall, for like archival data.
1:03:08SPEAKERI think they overestimated, as with CD,
1:03:10SPEAKERthey overestimated the long-term viability of the laser disc
1:03:14SPEAKERas a backup media, an archival media.
1:03:17SPEAKER- Yes.
1:03:18SPEAKER- What was the other one?
1:03:18SPEAKERWhat was the other record, there was just a rewritable one?
1:03:22SPEAKER- I don't believe there were any rewritable ones.
1:03:23SPEAKERI believe there were both.
1:03:25SPEAKER- So they weren't, like the CD-RWs and DVD-RWs use dye
1:03:28SPEAKERthat can be basically reset if you hit it
1:03:30SPEAKERwith a certain frequency or power of laser.
1:03:33SPEAKERAnd I assume we hadn't gotten to that technology yet.
1:03:36SPEAKER- CRV discs, CRV component recordable video disc
1:03:40SPEAKERis the name of one of them.
1:03:42SPEAKERThose had to be stored in disc caddies.
1:03:45SPEAKER- Oh, 'cause they were so fragile?
1:03:46SPEAKER- Yes.
1:03:47SPEAKER- Boy.
1:03:48SPEAKER- Recorded once per side.
1:03:50SPEAKERThe recordable laser video disc was the other.
1:03:54SPEAKER- Ah, yes, the RLV.
1:03:57SPEAKER- Function exactly like a CD-R disc.
1:03:59SPEAKER- Okay.
1:04:00SPEAKER- Have to give a shout out to Dragon's Lair
1:04:03SPEAKERand what laser disc did for early FMV video games.
1:04:06SPEAKER- I didn't, I don't think as a kid,
1:04:08SPEAKERI realized that Dragon's Lair was like hand animated
1:04:10SPEAKERthat was just giving chapters on a laser disc.
1:04:12SPEAKER- Oh yeah, oh yeah.
1:04:13SPEAKER- I just thought that was what video games
1:04:15SPEAKERwere supposed to look like.
1:04:16SPEAKERI was like, that's a good video game
1:04:17SPEAKERand all these others are crap.
1:04:18SPEAKER- Yes, there was a full on laser disc player
1:04:20SPEAKERin every Dragon's Lair machine.
1:04:22SPEAKERAmerican laser games, anybody makers of Mad Dog McCree?
1:04:26SPEAKERAmong others.
1:04:27SPEAKER- Okay, without the Mad Dog McCree, it turns out.
1:04:28SPEAKER- Who shot Johnny Rock.
1:04:31SPEAKER- I never saw, the only one of those I'm familiar with
1:04:33SPEAKERI think is Mad Dog.
1:04:34SPEAKERAnd that's only because of giant bomb stuff
1:04:35SPEAKER'cause we did, we had people who were big fans.
1:04:38SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't think I really saw those
1:04:39SPEAKERin arcades much at all back in the day,
1:04:41SPEAKERbut I was familiar with them from magazines
1:04:43SPEAKERand then they started coming out on things like 3DO
1:04:44SPEAKERafter a while, once CD systems started getting big.
1:04:48SPEAKER- You could get Dragon's Lair for your NPC one computer.
1:04:51SPEAKER- Yes.
1:04:52SPEAKER- I never was, I don't know if anybody,
1:04:55SPEAKERwas it possible to get good at Dragon's Lair?
1:04:57SPEAKER- Well, you could like memorize it, sure.
1:04:59SPEAKER- You could just have to spend a lot of money.
1:05:01SPEAKER- Memorize the inputs and timing against each scene
1:05:03SPEAKERand beat it on one credit if you knew what you were doing.
1:05:05SPEAKER- But perfect arcade game.
1:05:07SPEAKER- Is that a fun use of your time?
1:05:09SPEAKERI'm not sure.
1:05:10SPEAKER- I don't know, you get to see the whole story
1:05:11SPEAKERand I think people had special feelings
1:05:13SPEAKERabout the female leads in most of those games as well.
1:05:16SPEAKER- That's, yes, Daphne, is that her name?
1:05:18SPEAKER- Daphne was the one in Dragon's Lair.
1:05:21SPEAKERI don't think I ever saw,
1:05:22SPEAKERI only saw the later Space Aces that weren't FMV games.
1:05:26SPEAKER- Yeah, last thing about Laserdisc that I was reminded of
1:05:29SPEAKERin reading about this is that some movies
1:05:32SPEAKERstill have yet to ever be released on a more recent format.
1:05:35SPEAKERThere were some movies that last came out on Laserdisc
1:05:38SPEAKERand that's basically the best
1:05:40SPEAKERand possibly only way to watch them.
1:05:43SPEAKER- Yeah, well, especially if you think about all the movies
1:05:45SPEAKERthat the original prints were lost on recently,
1:05:49SPEAKERthere's probably quite a bit of stuff
1:05:50SPEAKERthat's only available on Laserdisc at this point.
1:05:52SPEAKER- Yes.
1:05:53SPEAKER- And I wonder, it's always interesting
1:05:57SPEAKER'cause when the special editions of Star Wars came out,
1:06:01SPEAKERthe early versions of the Harmey cuts and stuff like that
1:06:04SPEAKERused a lot of Laserdisc footage until there was, I think,
1:06:06SPEAKERa New Zealand broadcast in HD
1:06:11SPEAKERor something that they ended up using
1:06:12SPEAKERfor a lot of the other stuff, but anyway.
1:06:13SPEAKER- Yes, that's correct.
1:06:15SPEAKERSo anyway, a lot of those Laserdiscs
1:06:16SPEAKERare very sought after today for movies and anime and stuff
1:06:19SPEAKERthat has never come out on anything else
1:06:21SPEAKERand there's a big scene around capturing those
1:06:23SPEAKERin increasingly higher qualities,
1:06:26SPEAKERwhich we should touch on at the end of this.
1:06:27SPEAKER- Well, I was gonna say, one of the interesting things
1:06:29SPEAKERthat's come out in the last few years,
1:06:30SPEAKERand we'll talk about this at the end,
1:06:32SPEAKERbut is that because this stuff is analog,
1:06:35SPEAKERyour ability to pull,
1:06:37SPEAKERlike there's not an upper limit
1:06:38SPEAKERto the quality of the capture.
1:06:40SPEAKERI mean, there is an upper limit, but it's not a binary,
1:06:44SPEAKERis it the good version or is it less than the good version
1:06:47SPEAKERlike it is with a DVD copy or something like that?
1:06:49SPEAKER- Yes, but it does turn out to be significantly higher
1:06:51SPEAKERquality than what any of the players
1:06:53SPEAKERon the market can produce.
1:06:54SPEAKER- Oh, that's interesting.
1:06:55SPEAKER- Yeah, so we'll talk about that at the end.
1:06:57SPEAKERThere's a fascinating scene around capturing analog video
1:07:01SPEAKERfrom some of this old media.
1:07:02SPEAKERBefore we get there, should do another little digression
1:07:05SPEAKERhere into a failed format,
1:07:07SPEAKERand it's a bizarre, fascinating failed format.
1:07:09SPEAKER- I'd never heard of this one, Brad.
1:07:11SPEAKER- I've been aware of this for a while,
1:07:13SPEAKERbut I wasn't super clear on how it worked.
1:07:15SPEAKERThe capacitance electronic disc.
1:07:18SPEAKER- This is another format that I think we have to shout out,
1:07:21SPEAKERTechnology Connections, because they've done hours
1:07:23SPEAKERand hours and hours of videos about this thing.
1:07:25SPEAKER- They have like a two hour long series of videos about CD.
1:07:28SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:07:29SPEAKER- Which hit the market in 1981, it was made by RCA.
1:07:32SPEAKERApparently started development in 1964.
1:07:36SPEAKER- Wow.
1:07:37SPEAKER- Although it started originally, so I mean,
1:07:38SPEAKERso not to bury the lead here.
1:07:40SPEAKERCD functions like a record, like a vinyl record,
1:07:44SPEAKERlike an LP, which is to say there is an actual stylus.
1:07:46SPEAKERThere's basically a needle that reads the disc.
1:07:50SPEAKER- I'm making indistinguishable, incomprehensible noises.
1:07:55SPEAKERHow does that work?
1:07:56SPEAKER- So, but it's not picking up physical grooves,
1:08:00SPEAKERphysical variations, the way a record player would use me,
1:08:04SPEAKERwhere the needle is actually like physically writing
1:08:08SPEAKERwhat it's playing.
1:08:09SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:08:10SPEAKER- In this case, that's where the capacitance
1:08:11SPEAKERin the CD name comes in.
1:08:13SPEAKERIt's actually reading these information stored
1:08:16SPEAKERon the disc electrically.
1:08:17SPEAKERThe stylus, the needle for want of a better term,
1:08:22SPEAKERis capacitive and it's basically forming a circuit
1:08:25SPEAKERwith the disc as it's reading the data electrically from it.
1:08:29SPEAKER- Wow.
1:08:29SPEAKER- So it's still touching the disc
1:08:31SPEAKERand it's still physically touching the disc.
1:08:33SPEAKERAnd the course of development,
1:08:34SPEAKERthey ended up putting a layer of silicone on the disc
1:08:36SPEAKERas kind of a lubricant to try to increase the longevity
1:08:41SPEAKERof both the stylus and the discs.
1:08:44SPEAKER- This already sounds like a bad idea, Brad.
1:08:46SPEAKER- So the reason I mentioned that it works
1:08:48SPEAKERlike a record player is that in the sixties,
1:08:49SPEAKERwhen they started working on this,
1:08:50SPEAKERoriginally it was an attempt to increase the amount
1:08:52SPEAKERof audio you could store on an LP.
1:08:55SPEAKER- So that your depressed poet society album
1:09:00SPEAKERcould fit on one CD disc instead of two?
1:09:02SPEAKER- Yes, exactly.
1:09:03SPEAKERI mean, they accomplished that goal apparently very well.
1:09:06SPEAKERI didn't look at the ratio of how much more audio
1:09:08SPEAKERthis could store than a regular vinyl record,
1:09:10SPEAKERbut I'm sure it's quite large.
1:09:11SPEAKERBut it languished in development for so long
1:09:14SPEAKERthat by the time they had decided to make it a video format
1:09:17SPEAKERand got it done in two markets,
1:09:19SPEAKERLaserDisc had beaten them by three years
1:09:21SPEAKERand LaserDisc was already superior.
1:09:22SPEAKER- Wow.
1:09:24SPEAKER- It's a 12 inch disc, just like LaserDisc.
1:09:26SPEAKERIt holds about the same amount.
1:09:27SPEAKERI think it's also 60 minutes per side.
1:09:30SPEAKERProbably the craziest thing about this format,
1:09:32SPEAKERif you've never seen it,
1:09:33SPEAKERis it turned out that these discs were incredibly susceptible
1:09:37SPEAKERto being disrupted by dust,
1:09:39SPEAKERnot just dust sticking on the disc,
1:09:40SPEAKERbut apparently like if I understood dust plus humidity,
1:09:44SPEAKERcontacting these discs would create permanent damage
1:09:46SPEAKERto the disc in some way or permanent distortion.
1:09:48SPEAKER- Because the dust could hold a charge?
1:09:50SPEAKER- During testing, it was shown that exposure to dust
1:09:52SPEAKERcaused skipped grooves.
1:09:54SPEAKERIf dust was allowed to settle on the discs,
1:09:56SPEAKERthe dust would absorb moisture from the air
1:09:57SPEAKERand cement the dust particle to the disc surface.
1:10:01SPEAKER- Oh boy.
1:10:01SPEAKER- Causing the stylus to jump back
1:10:03SPEAKERin a locked groove situation.
1:10:05SPEAKERThus, and I'll just read the rest of this
1:10:07SPEAKER'cause it explains their solution.
1:10:09SPEAKERThus, an idea was developed in which the disc
1:10:10SPEAKERwould be stored and handled in a plastic caddy
1:10:13SPEAKERfrom which the CED would be extracted by the player
1:10:17SPEAKERso that exposure to dust would be minimized.
1:10:19SPEAKERI put a very short video in the show notes
1:10:21SPEAKERthat you can watch that is just somebody with a CD player
1:10:24SPEAKERshowing how it works.
1:10:25SPEAKERIt's literally like a record, like an LP size,
1:10:27SPEAKERyou know what an album cover looks like for an LP?
1:10:30SPEAKERIt's like that, the cartridge is big and broad like that,
1:10:34SPEAKERbig square with the movie poster on it.
1:10:36SPEAKERYou stick that entire giant caddy into the player,
1:10:40SPEAKERwait about three seconds and then pull the caddy back out.
1:10:43SPEAKERAnd at that point, the disc has been grabbed by the player
1:10:46SPEAKERand is stored inside ready for playback.
1:10:48SPEAKER- Oh, wow.
1:10:49SPEAKER- Yes.
1:10:50SPEAKER- Actually, this is a trip.
1:10:52SPEAKER- Yes, it's pretty wild.
1:10:53SPEAKERAnd the guy, and this is just one of these little
1:10:56SPEAKERthrowaway YouTube videos where the guy just pointed a camera
1:10:59SPEAKERat his screen and player and talked over for three minutes,
1:11:01SPEAKERbut he mentions in there, he's like,
1:11:03SPEAKER"Yeah, this is known as a skippy format,
1:11:05SPEAKERbut if you're careful with your discs
1:11:07SPEAKERand you keep your player in good shape,
1:11:08SPEAKERit's really not a problem."
1:11:09SPEAKER- Wow.
1:11:10SPEAKER- So I don't believe CED had chapter markers
1:11:13SPEAKERthe way laser disc did, but you could jog back and forth
1:11:15SPEAKERthrough it quite quickly.
1:11:17SPEAKERHe shows that off in there.
1:11:18SPEAKERYou can kind of fast forward minutes at a time very quickly.
1:11:21SPEAKER- Do you have a sense of how dense were the grooves
1:11:24SPEAKERcompared to a traditional record?
1:11:26SPEAKER- The groove is 657 nanometers wide
1:11:29SPEAKERand has a length of up to 12 miles per disc.
1:11:32SPEAKER- So that's way bigger, that's way more dense
1:11:34SPEAKERthan an LP, I think.
1:11:37SPEAKER- Yeah, I would think so.
1:11:39SPEAKERAt any rate, one side effect of the way this thing works
1:11:43SPEAKERthat occurred to me is that this was a way to,
1:11:45SPEAKERyou know how people display LP album art,
1:11:48SPEAKERsometimes they frame it or put it up
1:11:50SPEAKERon the wall in their homes.
1:11:51SPEAKERThis would have kind of been a way
1:11:52SPEAKERto get a cool version of that for movies
1:11:55SPEAKERbecause that's what these caddies were exactly
1:11:57SPEAKERwas just a big record cover looking
1:12:00SPEAKERmovie poster display thing.
1:12:02SPEAKERWould have been a cool way to do some found art later.
1:12:04SPEAKER- I mean, they look like giant, they look like...
1:12:08SPEAKERWell, so there was a moment when Blu-ray was being developed
1:12:11SPEAKERwhere it was thought that it was gonna have to be
1:12:13SPEAKERin caddies too 'cause they hadn't figured out
1:12:14SPEAKERto make the discs not scratch and scratches disrupted.
1:12:18SPEAKERThe grooves were so fine that scratches were very disruptive.
1:12:22SPEAKER- Yeah, I actually, I've heard this in the notes.
1:12:24SPEAKERCan you help me remember in what capacity CD caddies
1:12:28SPEAKERwere used in the early days of CD-ROM?
1:12:29SPEAKERLike did some CDs ship in caddies or was it...
1:12:32SPEAKER- Some players had caddies.
1:12:34SPEAKER- That's what it was.
1:12:35SPEAKERSome CD-ROMs had caddies and you put the disc in the caddy
1:12:37SPEAKERand then loaded the caddy, correct?
1:12:39SPEAKER- Yeah, so my first CD-ROM player was a caddy CD-ROM player
1:12:43SPEAKERand it was because it spun at 2X speed, I believe,
1:12:47SPEAKERwhich meant that, I don't know, I assume it needed the caddy
1:12:51SPEAKERbecause they couldn't spindle it up
1:12:53SPEAKERat high speeds or something.
1:12:55SPEAKER- Yeah, that makes sense.
1:12:57SPEAKER- But yeah, so fast forward, quick, smooth, fast forward
1:13:02SPEAKERand rewind from the video that I saw on the CD.
1:13:05SPEAKER- Yes.
1:13:06SPEAKER- What a weird format.
1:13:08SPEAKER- You could pause it, but you didn't get a freeze frame of,
1:13:11SPEAKERyou didn't get a freeze frame of the video.
1:13:12SPEAKER- Oh, did it just stop?
1:13:13SPEAKER- No, because it kept spinning and it couldn't just hang.
1:13:16SPEAKERIt couldn't linger on one single frame
1:13:18SPEAKERbecause it just kept spinning, you know, so.
1:13:21SPEAKERSorry, I think I totally glossed over
1:13:23SPEAKERthe video quality of this thing.
1:13:24SPEAKERIt was about 240 lines of resolution,
1:13:26SPEAKERso this actually did not look much better
1:13:27SPEAKERthan VHS and beta of the time.
1:13:29SPEAKER- Oh, that seems, well, and also it wasn't durable.
1:13:32SPEAKERLike RCA said, you could only play 500 times or something.
1:13:35SPEAKER- That was the other thing is that RCA,
1:13:36SPEAKERthat the manufacturer themselves estimated
1:13:38SPEAKERthat a retail movie could be played back about 500 times.
1:13:41SPEAKER- That means it's not much better for wear than a VHS tape.
1:13:44SPEAKER- Right, so, I mean, granted, you know,
1:13:47SPEAKERare you really gonna watch a movie that you bought
1:13:48SPEAKER500 times, probably not very often.
1:13:51SPEAKER- I'm gonna go and tell you, if you have kids
1:13:52SPEAKERand you buy movies for them to watch,
1:13:54SPEAKERoften you, I assure you, I've seen Frozen 500 times
1:13:57SPEAKERin all 11 years of my daughter's life.
1:13:59SPEAKER- That's fair.
1:14:00SPEAKER- Probably also the Little Mermaid.
1:14:02SPEAKER- Yes, anyway, that's why I mentioned earlier
1:14:04SPEAKERthat laser discs theoretically could be played forever.
1:14:06SPEAKERObviously there are plenty of other factors involved there,
1:14:08SPEAKERbut that was explicitly not the case with this other
1:14:12SPEAKERcompeting disc format, but CEDs were going to wear out
1:14:16SPEAKERrelatively quickly.
1:14:16SPEAKER- What a weird thing, like I have no,
1:14:20SPEAKERunlike the laser discs and the different tape formats,
1:14:23SPEAKERI have absolutely no exposure to this
1:14:25SPEAKERin a real world context at all.
1:14:27SPEAKERI never saw one of these, I don't think.
1:14:29SPEAKER- It did not last long.
1:14:30SPEAKERIt launched in 1981 under the name Selectavision.
1:14:34SPEAKER- It's a pretty good name.
1:14:35SPEAKER- That's a good ass 80s product name, actually.
1:14:38SPEAKER- Why do you think they called it select?
1:14:39SPEAKERIs it 'cause you could select where to drop the needle
1:14:41SPEAKERand play at any time?
1:14:42SPEAKER- I don't know, maybe.
1:14:43SPEAKER- Do you think you could like DJ it and like spin this,
1:14:45SPEAKERit's like release the motor and like spin the video
1:14:48SPEAKERlike you would if you were a hip hop DJ?
1:14:51SPEAKERIt's kind of amazing.
1:14:52SPEAKER- Open up the top of your player to do that, I guess.
1:14:54SPEAKER- You'd have to have a clean room,
1:14:55SPEAKERprobably given how dust prone they were.
1:14:57SPEAKER- Sure.
1:14:59SPEAKERAnyway, like I said, by the time they came out,
1:15:01SPEAKERlaser disc was already better.
1:15:03SPEAKERSo this really did not go anywhere.
1:15:04SPEAKERIt came out in '81.
1:15:05SPEAKERThey stopped making players by '84
1:15:08SPEAKERand they stopped making movies in '86.
1:15:10SPEAKER- Dead format.
1:15:10SPEAKER- Yep, yep, but a fascinating one.
1:15:13SPEAKER- You know, it lasted longer than HD DVD.
1:15:15SPEAKER- Yeah, fair, that's true.
1:15:16SPEAKER- Next on the list are some home video formats,
1:15:20SPEAKERnotably Video 8.
1:15:22SPEAKERThis was in 1985.
1:15:24SPEAKERIt's pretty much also ended up being a Sony format,
1:15:26SPEAKERbut it was co-developed with Kodak, JVC,
1:15:28SPEAKERHitachi, Matsushita/Panasonic, and Philips.
1:15:33SPEAKERIn 1986, most of the partners that weren't Sony
1:15:35SPEAKERannounced plans to embrace VHS-C for their cameras instead.
1:15:40SPEAKERAnd the main benefit of Video 8
1:15:42SPEAKERwas a smaller, skinnier cartridge,
1:15:44SPEAKERso you could do high quality video
1:15:47SPEAKERon like handy cam style camcorders.
1:15:52SPEAKERIt was not compatible in any way with VHS,
1:15:56SPEAKERbut because everything had RCA plugs,
1:15:58SPEAKERthe cam recorder and your VHS player,
1:16:01SPEAKERit was pretty easy to do a one generation loss transfer
1:16:04SPEAKERfrom the camcorder to a VHS player or whatever.
1:16:07SPEAKER- God, this is making me realize
1:16:08SPEAKERhow long and varied Sony's history is
1:16:10SPEAKERof trying to create their own formats that they control.
1:16:13SPEAKER- Yeah, I think this was a natural offshoot.
1:16:15SPEAKERLike the Video 8 stuff, the video quality on it
1:16:19SPEAKERwas noticeably better 'cause it had more lines of resolution.
1:16:21SPEAKERI wasn't, now I say that, I wasn't actually able
1:16:24SPEAKERto find a clear definition of what the Video 8 format was.
1:16:28SPEAKERIt's like, I'm sure it's out there.
1:16:30SPEAKERI'm gonna get a bazillion comments.
1:16:32SPEAKERIt was the upgraded version, Hi8,
1:16:34SPEAKERwhich came out in the late '80s or early '90s,
1:16:37SPEAKERgave you 400 total lines of resolution
1:16:40SPEAKERof which there was still some split off for the V-Sync,
1:16:42SPEAKERbut you got a better than NTSC basically format.
1:16:48SPEAKERBut it worked with NTSC or PAL, just like VHS and beta.
1:16:53SPEAKER- Yeah, but I mean, sorry, sorry.
1:16:55SPEAKERFrom beta max to this, to Video 8, to was Minidisc?
1:17:01SPEAKER- Proprietary, was that proprietary or no?
1:17:04SPEAKER- Oh, Minidisc was absolutely proprietary, yeah.
1:17:06SPEAKER- Like to the various memory stick formats
1:17:10SPEAKERthat they tried to foist on people instead of SD cards.
1:17:12SPEAKERLike Sony really, I think they may have finally
1:17:15SPEAKERlearned their lesson, but that was probably mostly forced
1:17:17SPEAKERby the kind of end of physical formats.
1:17:19SPEAKER- You say they finally learned their lesson,
1:17:20SPEAKERbut they're, you know, Blu-ray is now more than 15 years old
1:17:25SPEAKERalmost and 10 years old and it turns out they get a check
1:17:30SPEAKERevery time somebody buys a Blu-ray disc.
1:17:32SPEAKER- Oh yeah, it was all worth it, I'm sure.
1:17:35SPEAKER- Yeah, they finally, all you need is the last one
1:17:37SPEAKERit turns out and you win.
1:17:39SPEAKER- Yes, yes.
1:17:40SPEAKER- So High 8 came out in the early '90s,
1:17:41SPEAKERit was better resolution Video 8.
1:17:45SPEAKERThose Video 8 tapes will play in a High 8 camera,
1:17:48SPEAKERbut not the other way around, obviously.
1:17:50SPEAKERAnd we'll talk about it next time,
1:17:52SPEAKERbut there was a later extension to High 8
1:17:54SPEAKERthat made it digital in the early 2000s.
1:17:59SPEAKER- These were basically camcorder formats
1:18:01SPEAKERthat you bought the tapes that you needed
1:18:03SPEAKERfor the camcorder you have and that was pretty much it.
1:18:05SPEAKER- That's when tapes started getting small.
1:18:07SPEAKER- I have a High 8 VHS, a High 8 camcorder
1:18:10SPEAKERthat I bought in the late '90s.
1:18:11SPEAKER- That's cool.
1:18:12SPEAKER- Yeah, it's fine.
1:18:13SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm sure it was.
1:18:15SPEAKERWe should talk about Sony HDVS briefly here.
1:18:18SPEAKERIt's kind of out of scope for this episode
1:18:20SPEAKER'cause it never became a home format,
1:18:22SPEAKERalthough it might have in an alternate universe.
1:18:24SPEAKER- Yeah, this is, my grandparents were super stoked
1:18:27SPEAKERabout this in the '80s.
1:18:28SPEAKER- Really?
1:18:28SPEAKER- Yeah, they were, my grandparents loved
1:18:31SPEAKERa good advance in TV.
1:18:33SPEAKER- Oh, wow, I'm very impressed they even knew about this.
1:18:36SPEAKER- So my grandmother, her dad,
1:18:39SPEAKERwhen they were kids in England, in pre-war England,
1:18:43SPEAKERhung, like literally hand-built a radio
1:18:48SPEAKERand ran copper wire around the crown molding
1:18:51SPEAKERof their living room so they could listen
1:18:53SPEAKERto the first broadcast on BBC One when she was a kid.
1:18:56SPEAKER- That's amazing.
1:18:57SPEAKER- Like the long history of being into the new technology
1:18:59SPEAKERshed, I guess, in my family.
1:19:00SPEAKER- That is rad.
1:19:03SPEAKERThe Sony HDVS really never proceeded past
1:19:06SPEAKERlike a very expensive production setup,
1:19:09SPEAKERbut it was their first attempt at analog HD video
1:19:11SPEAKERat a time when it had not been standardized yet.
1:19:13SPEAKER- And they did a lot of like press tour stuff with this
1:19:16SPEAKERas my, like the, if I had to guess,
1:19:18SPEAKERmy grandmother knew about this because of Newsweek
1:19:20SPEAKERwould probably be the place she would have picked it up.
1:19:22SPEAKER- I can see that.
1:19:23SPEAKERThey kind of, from the sound of it,
1:19:25SPEAKERthey basically jumped the gun and they kind of tried
1:19:27SPEAKERto predict what they thought was going to be
1:19:29SPEAKERthe analog high definition broadcast standard
1:19:31SPEAKERand kind of develop that preemptively.
1:19:33SPEAKERThey did end up with an analog video pipeline
1:19:35SPEAKERthat Wikipedia described it as a resolution of 1125 lines,
1:19:39SPEAKERbut only 1035 active ones.
1:19:41SPEAKERSo I guess there's something in the overscan
1:19:43SPEAKERor I'm not sure exactly what the-
1:19:44SPEAKER- It's probably Vsync and metadata would be my guess.
1:19:48SPEAKER- But not, you know, not far off at all
1:19:49SPEAKERfrom the 1080p that people finally settled on
1:19:52SPEAKERfor the digital high definition standard.
1:19:54SPEAKER- Wasn't 16 by nine though.
1:19:56SPEAKER- It was later.
1:19:56SPEAKERSo I think I don't have it in front of me right now.
1:19:58SPEAKERI think it was like five by four was the original ratio,
1:20:04SPEAKERbut then it became 16 by nine in the late eighties.
1:20:08SPEAKERI believe by the late eighties it had become 16 by nine.
1:20:10SPEAKERYeah, sorry, five to three.
1:20:12SPEAKERFive to three was the original aspect ratio
1:20:15SPEAKERand then later 16 by nine.
1:20:16SPEAKER- Okay, so that's 15 by nine, basically?
1:20:19SPEAKER- Yeah. - Yeah, okay.
1:20:21SPEAKER- At any rate, this never made it home.
1:20:22SPEAKERThere was never any home format
1:20:26SPEAKERthat this was distributed on.
1:20:27SPEAKERThere were no TVs that could display it at the time.
1:20:29SPEAKERSo obviously, apparently when this came out,
1:20:32SPEAKERit came out in 1986 and a basic production setup
1:20:34SPEAKERwhich was literally one camera,
1:20:36SPEAKERa monitor and a tape recorder was a million and a half dollars
1:20:39SPEAKER- Wow.
1:20:40SPEAKER- And the tapes cost $2,500 per hour of tapeable footage.
1:20:45SPEAKER- Do you think this is 'cause of the cameras and stuff
1:20:47SPEAKERwhere it was basically built by hand?
1:20:49SPEAKER- Maybe, I don't know. - These are one-offs?
1:20:50SPEAKER- I don't know.
1:20:51SPEAKERFrom what I read, it sounds like
1:20:52SPEAKERthey sold these production setups in the dozens at best.
1:20:54SPEAKER- That seems right.
1:20:55SPEAKER- For how expensive it was.
1:20:57SPEAKERIt was used here and there,
1:20:59SPEAKERlike a couple of feature films were shot on it,
1:21:01SPEAKERa couple of TV movies,
1:21:02SPEAKERa fair number of concert films from the sound of it.
1:21:06SPEAKERThe Genesis Invisible Touch Tour,
1:21:08SPEAKERapparently was shot on this.
1:21:10SPEAKERVery, very limited use in production.
1:21:13SPEAKERAnd in most cases,
1:21:15SPEAKERif somebody even saw footage shot with this,
1:21:17SPEAKERit was transferred to film and shown in theaters
1:21:19SPEAKERor shown over NTSC, which would have lost a lot
1:21:22SPEAKERof the quality anyway of a broadcast.
1:21:24SPEAKER- Yeah, you sent me some YouTube videos
1:21:25SPEAKERthat seemed to be ripped from like a high quality
1:21:28SPEAKERanalog source that were really, it was,
1:21:31SPEAKERit's funny, when I watched them at first,
1:21:32SPEAKERI wasn't, I didn't clock anything as being weird about them.
1:21:36SPEAKERBut then when you pointed out what I should be looking for,
1:21:38SPEAKERit was like, oh, right.
1:21:39SPEAKERAll of this stuff is stuff that you don't see
1:21:41SPEAKERon modern digital equipment.
1:21:43SPEAKER- Yeah, I've got a link to the show notes.
1:21:44SPEAKERThe Sony, the Metamorphosis demo from 1990
1:21:47SPEAKERis like fairly famous.
1:21:49SPEAKERI think it's only been about four years ago,
1:21:51SPEAKERmaybe less that somebody found like an original copy
1:21:54SPEAKERand captured it in high definition.
1:21:57SPEAKERBut it is high def analog video.
1:21:59SPEAKERSo it's like roughly the resolution of 1080p
1:22:02SPEAKERthat you're used to,
1:22:03SPEAKERbut with all of the characteristics of analog video,
1:22:06SPEAKERyou know, like, like in this, this,
1:22:07SPEAKERthere's a bunch of footage of like kind of a dance party
1:22:09SPEAKERin a studio here.
1:22:10SPEAKERAnd you see like every time the camera
1:22:12SPEAKERpans across the studio lights,
1:22:13SPEAKERyou get those like streaky after images,
1:22:16SPEAKERkind of trails on the, on the bright lights and stuff.
1:22:18SPEAKERIt's just kind of uncanny to me to see something this clear
1:22:21SPEAKERand crisp from the late eighties,
1:22:23SPEAKERbut with those hallmarks of,
1:22:25SPEAKERof what analog video looked like back then.
1:22:27SPEAKER- I also wonder if watching them on an analog TV,
1:22:30SPEAKERinstead of being filtered through the, you know,
1:22:32SPEAKERthe YouTube digital compression thing,
1:22:35SPEAKERthe pipeline would, would make them stand out even more.
1:22:38SPEAKERCause like there's, there's a thing that happens
1:22:41SPEAKERwith brains where like when DVD was popular
1:22:45SPEAKERand, and, and like I was getting digital cable
1:22:49SPEAKERand digital satellite TV, we're getting,
1:22:51SPEAKERwe're both MPEG-2 compression on every channel.
1:22:54SPEAKERYour brain eventually started filtering out
1:22:56SPEAKERall the MPEG-2 compression artifacts.
1:22:58SPEAKERWhen you go back and watch MPEG-2 video now,
1:23:01SPEAKERthe compression artifacts are really, really visible
1:23:03SPEAKERand, and, and really stand out.
1:23:06SPEAKERI assume the same thing's happened with the stuff
1:23:07SPEAKERthat H.264 and H.265 and,
1:23:09SPEAKERand at some point in the future AV1 will do as well.
1:23:13SPEAKERBut I, I, my bet is that this looks the, on a CRT,
1:23:17SPEAKERthis would look remarkable.
1:23:19SPEAKER- Probably, yeah.
1:23:21SPEAKERUnfortunately not a lot of HD CRTs around to see.
1:23:23SPEAKER- No, sadly no.
1:23:24SPEAKER- At this point.
1:23:25SPEAKERI do, I do wish whoever had gotten their hands
1:23:27SPEAKERon the hardware and this tape and had captured it,
1:23:29SPEAKERhad put out a kind of raw version that hadn't run
1:23:32SPEAKERthrough the shitty YouTube compression.
1:23:34SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:23:35SPEAKER- It would be a cool historical artifact to have.
1:23:37SPEAKERThe other reason I was going to say this footage
1:23:38SPEAKERis very famous, at least to me, and this is,
1:23:41SPEAKERthis is going back to being in like Mr. Land.
1:23:43SPEAKERThis, this was used in all kinds of other Sony contexts,
1:23:46SPEAKERlike the PlayStation one developer disc that they put out
1:23:50SPEAKERthat demos a bunch of what the PlayStation one can do.
1:23:53SPEAKER- Wait, what?
1:23:54SPEAKER- Really?
1:23:55SPEAKER- Uses this footage on it, except in like shitty,
1:23:57SPEAKERshitty low quality motion JPEG or whatever codec.
1:24:00SPEAKER- The CD is what they, what they CDV1 I think, right?
1:24:03SPEAKER- And that CD, you know,
1:24:04SPEAKERit's also got the famous T-Rex 3D model on it,
1:24:07SPEAKERbut that CD lets you like map this video
1:24:10SPEAKERonto a bunch of like floating spheres and cubes
1:24:13SPEAKERand do weird manipulations on it.
1:24:14SPEAKERSo like Sony used this footage in like R&D and like test
1:24:18SPEAKERand development contexts for a long time
1:24:21SPEAKERafter they shot this.
1:24:22SPEAKERSo it's like, it's pretty visible.
1:24:24SPEAKERSo it's cool that somebody went back
1:24:25SPEAKERand found the original quality version.
1:24:28SPEAKER- That's a trip.
1:24:30SPEAKERSo I think that takes us to the end of the analog scene
1:24:32SPEAKERfor the most part.
1:24:33SPEAKER- Pretty much, yeah.
1:24:34SPEAKER- I'd be curious if people feel like we missed something,
1:24:36SPEAKERplease let us know techpod@content.town
1:24:39SPEAKERas the email address.
1:24:41SPEAKERShould we talk about, I want to talk about the duping,
1:24:43SPEAKERthe preservation scene for this stuff.
1:24:45SPEAKER'Cause like there is,
1:24:47SPEAKERthere's a lot of really amazing stuff happening with people,
1:24:51SPEAKERwhich is, it's the right time for it to happen
1:24:52SPEAKER'cause we're reaching the end of life
1:24:54SPEAKERon a lot of older analog tapes now,
1:24:56SPEAKERespecially if they weren't stored
1:24:58SPEAKERin pretty stable conditions.
1:25:02SPEAKERBut yeah, I'm curious what's going on
1:25:05SPEAKERwith the preservation scene, right?
1:25:06SPEAKER- Yeah, I'm just gonna describe this from memory
1:25:08SPEAKER'cause I haven't dug into it too much.
1:25:09SPEAKERLike this would be a whole episode unto itself
1:25:11SPEAKERand I wouldn't even undertake that episode
1:25:13SPEAKERunless I actually buy some of this equipment
1:25:15SPEAKERand try to start doing some of it, which I have considered.
1:25:18SPEAKER- We can have an expert guest on too for this one.
1:25:20SPEAKER- We certainly could.
1:25:21SPEAKERBut I want to mess with this.
1:25:23SPEAKERI've got some use cases for this
1:25:25SPEAKERthat I'm kind of waffling on
1:25:26SPEAKERwhether it's worth getting into or not.
1:25:28SPEAKERThere's kind of multiple projects, some hardware,
1:25:30SPEAKERsome software in open source that have kind of come together
1:25:33SPEAKERto make all this stuff happen.
1:25:35SPEAKERThe oldest one I'm familiar with is LDD code, LD-D code,
1:25:39SPEAKERwhich is straight up just a GitHub repository
1:25:41SPEAKERyou can go find, which as you might expect,
1:25:43SPEAKERstands for laser disc decode.
1:25:44SPEAKERThat has been used in combination with a device called,
1:25:47SPEAKERI believe the pronunciation is the doomsday duplicator,
1:25:50SPEAKEReven though it's spelled like a domes day,
1:25:53SPEAKERwhich I believe is some UK listeners
1:25:56SPEAKERare yelling at the radio right now.
1:25:57SPEAKERI think it was some kind of educational broadcast
1:25:59SPEAKERor something.
1:26:00SPEAKER- Is this the made for TV movie
1:26:03SPEAKERthat freaked everybody in the UK out?
1:26:05SPEAKER- No, I don't think so.
1:26:06SPEAKERI think that's, oh God, what is the name of that movie?
1:26:08SPEAKERThat, oh, it's on the tip of my tongue.
1:26:09SPEAKERI know what you're talking about.
1:26:10SPEAKERThe post-apocalyptic, the nuclear war one.
1:26:12SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:26:13SPEAKER- That's not Threads, is it?
1:26:16SPEAKER- I don't know.
1:26:17SPEAKER- I believe that's Threads, the 1984,
1:26:20SPEAKERI'm looking at it now, TV movie.
1:26:22SPEAKER- It is Threads, yes.
1:26:23SPEAKER- I've heard that movie spoken about
1:26:26SPEAKERin Hushtones for a long time.
1:26:28SPEAKER- I have British friends who have been like,
1:26:30SPEAKERyeah, don't watch that.
1:26:31SPEAKERIt's bad, it'll mess you up.
1:26:33SPEAKER- That movie has been infamous on forums and stuff
1:26:35SPEAKERfor a long time for, yes.
1:26:37SPEAKER- Right, if they were the grave of the fireflies
1:26:39SPEAKERin terms of things I'm never gonna watch.
1:26:41SPEAKER- Very much so.
1:26:42SPEAKERI don't know what the origin of the term doomsday is
1:26:44SPEAKERin this context, but long story short,
1:26:46SPEAKERlet me cut to the chase here on what the hardware element
1:26:48SPEAKERof why this is interesting.
1:26:50SPEAKERAnd now there is a VHS decode
1:26:52SPEAKERthat has descended from the LDD code project,
1:26:55SPEAKERwhich kind of does the same thing for VHS,
1:26:56SPEAKERas you might imagine.
1:26:57SPEAKERHere's what they're doing though.
1:26:58SPEAKERAnd the hardware has an FPGA in it.
1:27:01SPEAKERLike it's a whole development thing
1:27:02SPEAKERyou need to put together on multiple boards
1:27:04SPEAKERthat's like $350, it's not trivial.
1:27:06SPEAKER- It's not too bad though.
1:27:08SPEAKER- Not too bad.
1:27:09SPEAKERWhat these devices are doing is going into laser discs,
1:27:12SPEAKERplayers, and VHS decks that expose this functionality
1:27:16SPEAKERand tapping directly into the RF signal
1:27:18SPEAKERthat's coming straight off the media.
1:27:20SPEAKER- Oh, off of the read head.
1:27:21SPEAKERSo before it goes through all the image processing.
1:27:23SPEAKER- Exactly, before it touches any of the video output
1:27:26SPEAKERhardware in that specific player and whatever transforms
1:27:29SPEAKERand reduction in quality happen as it goes to screen.
1:27:32SPEAKER- Oh, so you get the benefit
1:27:33SPEAKERof the high quality analog read heads
1:27:35SPEAKERand you run it through modern video processing signal?
1:27:38SPEAKER- Yes, you are getting the purest possible analog signal
1:27:41SPEAKERoff of the given media,
1:27:42SPEAKERwhether it's VHS tape or laser disc or what have you.
1:27:45SPEAKERSo it's within some margin of error,
1:27:48SPEAKERbecause like you said,
1:27:48SPEAKERthat you're still having to run it through some processing
1:27:50SPEAKERand try to like massage it to look right.
1:27:52SPEAKERBut it's effectively the highest quality
1:27:55SPEAKERyou can possibly pull off of that media,
1:27:57SPEAKERbecause it's basically exactly the information
1:27:59SPEAKERstored on the disc, give or take.
1:28:01SPEAKER- Oh, that's fascinating.
1:28:02SPEAKER- It's awesome, it's amazing, yes.
1:28:05SPEAKERSo that's where people are at with that stuff.
1:28:07SPEAKERAnd that's why I specifically mentioned
1:28:09SPEAKERthe thing about laser discs kind of still holding
1:28:12SPEAKERsome movies up from any newer formats.
1:28:17SPEAKERLike that's kind of the only way you can watch stuff.
1:28:19SPEAKERThere are people out there you can see on Twitter,
1:28:20SPEAKERlike Chris Person who works with Aftermath
1:28:23SPEAKERand a number of other places,
1:28:25SPEAKERlike he's big into the scene.
1:28:26SPEAKERHe's Papa Pichu, P-I-S-H-U on Twitter.
1:28:30SPEAKERHe tweets about this stuff all the time.
1:28:31SPEAKERHe actually is one of those people
1:28:33SPEAKERwho's like getting their hands on obscure anime
1:28:35SPEAKERand stuff like that,
1:28:36SPEAKERthat doesn't exist outside of laser disc.
1:28:38SPEAKEROr exists in very poor quality otherwise.
1:28:41SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.
1:28:42SPEAKER- And is making very high quality backups
1:28:44SPEAKERor captures of it to preserve for historical value.
1:28:48SPEAKER- Well, it's funny, I was thinking about it
1:28:49SPEAKER'cause I've been doing work at PC World
1:28:52SPEAKERa couple of days a week, the last couple of months.
1:28:54SPEAKERAnd they used to host Mac World,
1:28:59SPEAKERand also hosted PC World event keynotes and stuff
1:29:03SPEAKERwhere things that we talked about
1:29:05SPEAKERin that Pirates of Silicon Valley episode
1:29:06SPEAKERa couple of weeks ago happened.
1:29:09SPEAKERAnd when you go look at the YouTube videos
1:29:10SPEAKERof those events, they're not great.
1:29:13SPEAKER- Oh.
1:29:14SPEAKER- I wanna find, yeah, it's fascinating.
1:29:17SPEAKER- I've talked to Adam before about some of the stuff
1:29:19SPEAKERthey might have lurking on old tapes from Apple keynotes
1:29:23SPEAKERand stuff that might be of immense historical value.
1:29:26SPEAKER- iPhone keynote would be amazing to get.
1:29:28SPEAKER- Yeah.
1:29:29SPEAKER- Absolutely.
1:29:30SPEAKERI've mentioned that specific one to him for sure.
1:29:32SPEAKERBut yeah, like in any way that's where the efforts
1:29:35SPEAKERare at these days for kind of trying to capture
1:29:37SPEAKERand preserve stuff that's locked up
1:29:39SPEAKERon these old analog formats.
1:29:41SPEAKERThere are a couple of cheaper options
1:29:43SPEAKERthat are similar to this that are almost as good.
1:29:46SPEAKERThere's one that uses like a $30 capture card
1:29:48SPEAKERoff of AliExpress that's apparently like pretty close.
1:29:52SPEAKER- And do you have to like take apart the VCR
1:29:54SPEAKERand solder stuff in?
1:29:55SPEAKER- I don't know about soldering.
1:29:57SPEAKERSo I've never gotten that far into looking
1:29:59SPEAKERdown the rabbit hole.
1:30:00SPEAKER- Okay.
1:30:01SPEAKER- You might be soldering stuff
1:30:02SPEAKERor you might be just clamping onto things.
1:30:03SPEAKERI'm not sure.
1:30:05SPEAKER- I mean, my guess is you're soldering onto stuff
1:30:06SPEAKERon the bottom of the board,
1:30:07SPEAKERjust so you have like extra leads coming off, but.
1:30:10SPEAKER- Yeah, and it requires compatible players.
1:30:13SPEAKERNot every player apparently makes it easy
1:30:15SPEAKERor possible to do this. - That makes sense.
1:30:16SPEAKER- So there's also the necessity of hunting down,
1:30:20SPEAKERbut apparently it's pretty easy.
1:30:21SPEAKERLike you see people all the time say like,
1:30:22SPEAKER"Oh, I found like one of these Panasonic Blue Line players
1:30:25SPEAKERat Goodwill for $5 that is now my capture setup."
1:30:28SPEAKERSo they're still out there.
1:30:29SPEAKERI'll mention for anybody who's listening to this,
1:30:32SPEAKERwho messes with this stuff, the thing, my use case,
1:30:35SPEAKERthe thing I've thought about doing with this
1:30:37SPEAKERis we've got some old VHS home movies from the 80s
1:30:40SPEAKERthat were recorded on an 80s era VHS camcorder,
1:30:43SPEAKERwhich as you can imagine are not great quality.
1:30:45SPEAKER- 180 lines for a lot of those it turns out, yeah.
1:30:48SPEAKER- So like my thought there is like,
1:30:49SPEAKERyes, they're very low quality
1:30:51SPEAKERbecause of the hardware of the era,
1:30:52SPEAKERbut still if I could lift those from the tapes
1:30:54SPEAKERat the best quality possible, given the limitations,
1:30:57SPEAKERis that worth it or not?
1:30:58SPEAKERWe got them captured and put on DVD a few years ago,
1:31:01SPEAKERbut I don't know that those captures were conducted
1:31:03SPEAKERin the best possible way and they're MPEG-2 compressed now.
1:31:06SPEAKER- Those are often like, yeah,
1:31:09SPEAKERlike not done at a high quality.
1:31:11SPEAKER- Right, like I'm guessing that's whatever setup
1:31:13SPEAKERmy mom sent them to or some kind of prosumer deck
1:31:15SPEAKERthat was probably going out of S-video at best or something
1:31:19SPEAKERinto some kind of PC capture of 10 years ago plus.
1:31:23SPEAKERSo anyway, I'm debating like,
1:31:25SPEAKERis it worth going down this rabbit hole
1:31:26SPEAKERto try to get these home movies, this family stuff,
1:31:29SPEAKERwhich is very sentimental in a higher quality?
1:31:30SPEAKERI'm not sure.
1:31:31SPEAKER- I mean, my general advice on that is,
1:31:34SPEAKERit's better to get it while the tapes still work.
1:31:36SPEAKER- Yeah, that's the other thing.
1:31:38SPEAKER- Than to not, than to wait for the perfect transfer
1:31:41SPEAKERand hope that you have a way to do it better
1:31:44SPEAKERat some point in the future.
1:31:44SPEAKER- It's not waiting for a better option.
1:31:46SPEAKERIt's, is it worth, is there actually even gonna be
1:31:49SPEAKERa noticeable difference from the DVDs that we already have?
1:31:52SPEAKERAnd that I can't answer.
1:31:53SPEAKERThat, I mean, you probably won't have the good stock music.
1:31:56SPEAKERSo that's it.
1:31:57SPEAKERThat's the tour, part one, we'll call that.
1:32:00SPEAKERThat's the analog edition of the history of home video.
1:32:06SPEAKERI'm, the CD stuff was the big revelation for me.
1:32:08SPEAKERI'd never heard of that.
1:32:09SPEAKERAnd also I was shocked at how little the difference
1:32:13SPEAKERin quality on beta and VHS was given all those beta peoples
1:32:18SPEAKERyelling about how good beta was.
1:32:20SPEAKER- Yes, that was revelation.
1:32:22SPEAKER- Yeah, if you think beta is better,
1:32:23SPEAKERplease don't leave a comment, we're fine.
1:32:27SPEAKER- Not a big beta resurrection scene out there
1:32:31SPEAKERfrom what I've seen.
1:32:32SPEAKER- I don't know, man.
1:32:33SPEAKERPeople yell about anything, but you know what I do love?
1:32:37SPEAKER- What's that?
1:32:37SPEAKER- Is our listeners.
1:32:39SPEAKER- Me too.
1:32:39SPEAKER- Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod
1:32:40SPEAKERis a listener supported podcast.
1:32:42SPEAKERThat means without listeners like you, we wouldn't be here.
1:32:45SPEAKERWe wouldn't be making a show, so.
1:32:47SPEAKER- I love them not least of all because they keep us going.
1:32:50SPEAKER- Yeah, because they, if you would like to find out
1:32:52SPEAKERhow you can support the show monetarily,
1:32:54SPEAKERwhich we appreciate in these times especially,
1:32:58SPEAKERyou can go to patreon.com/techpod.
1:33:00SPEAKERAgain, it's patreon.com/techpod.
1:33:03SPEAKERAnd where for five bucks a month,
1:33:05SPEAKERyou gain access to the fabulous Tech Pod Discord.
1:33:07SPEAKERYou get access to a wonderful community of nerds,
1:33:09SPEAKERjust like you, who love to talk about things like,
1:33:12SPEAKERis beta better than VHS?
1:33:13SPEAKEROr what the hell is this CED thing anyway?
1:33:16SPEAKERI've never heard of that.
1:33:17SPEAKERThat seems like something Brad and Will made up
1:33:18SPEAKERon this episode.
1:33:19SPEAKERBut no, there's two hours of Technology Connection videos
1:33:21SPEAKERout on the internet.
1:33:22SPEAKERYou can go watch and learn more about it right now.
1:33:25SPEAKERAgain, it's patreon.com/techpod.
1:33:27SPEAKERAnd while we thank all of our listeners every month
1:33:30SPEAKERand all of our patrons every month,
1:33:31SPEAKERwe give an extra special thank you
1:33:33SPEAKERto our executive producer tier patrons,
1:33:34SPEAKERincluding Andrew Slosky,
1:33:37SPEAKERPaddle Creek Games, makers of Fractured Veil,
1:33:39SPEAKERJordan Lippett, Octo Thorpe Buddy Redacted,
1:33:43SPEAKERJust Wedge, Twinkle Twinkie, David Allen, James Kamik,
1:33:46SPEAKERand Pantheon, makers of the HS3 high-speed 3D printer.
1:33:50SPEAKERThank you all so, so much.
1:33:51SPEAKERWe appreciate you.
1:33:52SPEAKERYes, we do.
1:33:53SPEAKERAnd on that note, I think we'll sign off for the week.
1:33:58SPEAKERI think we should give it a rest
1:33:59SPEAKERbetween this week and this one and the part two though.
1:34:02SPEAKERI think we should give it a minute to stew.
1:34:04SPEAKERI think we should maybe consult a friend next week
1:34:06SPEAKERand see if there's a fun project out there for people.
1:34:09SPEAKEROh, interesting idea.
1:34:11SPEAKERI mean, who knows what we're gonna do?
1:34:13SPEAKERTune in next week and find out.
1:34:15SPEAKERThanks for listening.
1:34:16SPEAKEREverybody see you then.
1:34:16SPEAKER(upbeat music)
1:34:21SPEAKER[BLANK_AUDIO]